


Seeing Red

by Rune_Spell



Category: Super Mario & Related Fandoms
Genre: Adventure, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Gen, Nintendo - Freeform, No Romance, Possession, Work In Progress, video games - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-03-19 01:43:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 39,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13694268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rune_Spell/pseuds/Rune_Spell
Summary: A girl, Sam, clogs her toilet with her father's toothbrush and ends up meeting Mario, the hero of the Mushroom Kingdom. Together, the two must find a way back to his world while dealing with day-to-day life, up to and including school.Because being stuck with an Italian guy who apparently no one else can see is soooo much fun.





	1. Day One - Part One

The water coming out of the toilet would not let up. It was already up to my ankles and starting to snake out into the hallway.

My cat, Tabitha, sat on the laundry basket nearby as she watched the new lake that was being formed.

I couldn't help watching it myself as I held a plunger in one hand. I knew it was now useless against my toilet; my dad’s toothbrush was beyond saving.

If I were sane enough, I would be calling a plumber and suffering the consequences.

That was not me. _Father would kill me if he were here!_ I was aware of the pencil dangling from my left ear, threatening to join the toothbrush in the toilet. My body refused to move with my racing mind even though I wanted to do something about this mess. _What can I do? What could I do?_

Staring helplessly at the gushing stream, my eyes threatened to well up.

Tabitha mewed as if to say, " _You screwed up. Game over."_ She pounced over to the sink where she could stand over the action.

The flood had risen another inch. I grimaced as it stung my bare feet.

It was followed by a scream.

Of course, the toilet refused to listen. It continued to spit at me. The small, furry rug outside the nearby shower was floating.

I couldn't handle this! Heck, I might as well win a Darwin Award now. The house would be an aquarium at this rate.

_No,_ my rational mind snapped, _there has to be a way to fix this. Machines always have an off button. If you found that, you could stop this._

_Oh sure. Where would this fabled off switch be?_ I argued. _This thing has pipes!_ Was it me, or was the water rising ridiculously fast? A moment ago, it had barely gotten past my ankles. Now it was halfway up to my knees.

_It’s because you’re panicking. If you stop, you won't drown. It won’t be that big of a deal if you calm down._

"Eow," Tabitha mewed. She moved further into the bowl of the sink.

I took a deep breath. _This isn’t worth freaking out over. Relax._ Water slushed around me as I made my way next to the cat. "Now do you see how bad this is?" I slowly moved my arms under her belly. The least I could do was save her.

She lurched down and bit me.

I leaped back as pain flared up in my left arm.

The wall right behind me absorbed the impact of my body. More pain coursed through me.

I breathed shallowly as I studied Tabitha.

She had fallen back into the sink. Her big, green pupils were the only things popping out from it.

I moaned as I pulled myself up. I could feel the water sloshing around my kneecaps. _We’ll drown at this rate!_

I made another attempt to grab her.

She hissed, wriggling around as I held her. One of her paws broke free. There was no stopping her from scratching literally the same place where she bit me.

I dropped her and the plunger. I winced as I instinctively grabbed my arm.

Tabitha fell into the miniature pool. She swam alongside the pouring stream out of the room.

"Why couldn't you have done that in the first place?" I cried after the tabby. " _Why_?" I went back to the toilet. "Stupid cat, stupid toilet, stupid pipe-"

I gasped as I grabbed the sides of the green object that had popped into existence from the toilet.

"PIPE?!"

A green pipe from _Super Mario_? That couldn't be right.

I rapped its side with a fist.

The pipe hollowly rang back.

There were plenty of people who wished that they had been born anywhere but Earth. I myself had once wanted to fly through the skies on dragonback, hoped and dreamed of climbing up mountains, and even envisioned myself as an overpowered mouse exploring mysterious dungeons.

That was all poorly-written fanfiction. I had come to see that over the years.

Why this, and why now?

I was eighteen now and there were a thousand things to worry about. After twelve years of hell, I was going to leave school. People insisted that I either get a job or apply to college. I wasn’t sure which path I would take or if I would even stick with the one I chose. What if I dropped one, went for the other, and hated it as well?

The worst thing about this situation, though? I had no third option.

I slowly peered into the pipe. A cheesy smell enveloped my nose, which I wrinkled.

_This_ has _to be a dream. A green pipe doesn’t just appear when you break a toilet._

Oh geez, I hoped that this was a dream. I didn’t need a broken toilet, much less this pipe sticking out of it! What if a lowly plumber saw this? What would they think?

Cool air blew from the pipe along with the cheese smell. I stuck my face deeper inside it.

It was completely dark inside.

_Where does it go?_

Wind gusts ruffled my shirt. When that pipe came up, the flow from the toilet had stopped. It now drained into the hallway, where the cat cried mournfully over her wet fur-

A blur shot out of the pipe, smacking me in the face.

Crying out, I stumbled backward. Red swarmed my vision. I cried out, but all that came out was a confused gargle.

My body met the wall again. My skull joined it, reverberating when it greeted the wall with a nasty _smack_.

A chilly wind brushed by.

A tremor raced down my body.

Tabitha continued to cry from deeper within the house.

I slumped sideways, trembling. My body slid down into the water. The pencil dislodged from my ear and fell straight down to my arm.

_What?_ My mind came to a foggy stop trying to comprehend the stabbing feeling. Adding to the pain was a headache, which flared up as I blinked, trying to regain some sort of clarity.

The red was gone. I saw the green pipe still lodged in the toilet. It stayed there as I stared at it.

Everything disappeared.

 

_What the hell just happened?_

The light bulbs in the bathroom burned white afterimages into my eyes. Why did Father get such bright ones?

My head buzzed from the knock it had received from the wall. I put my hand to it as I sat up.

_I guess I could rule out this as being a crazy dream._ My clothes were dripping with toilet water.

The green pipe was gone. The toilet showed no signs of it having ever been there. There was not even a scratch on it.

How did _that_ even happen? _Super Mario_ had been born a Nintendo franchise.

_Maybe I shouldn’t think about it. The bathroom is flooded. At least the toilet has stopped overflowing._

That didn't mean it would work. There was no way I was trying the toilet again. Not until somebody, _not_ me, tried it.

I got up, using the closed laundry basket as support. _I should clean this all up._

Where did we keep the broom again? The hallway closet? I had to find it.

Staggering into the hall, I found myself surrounded by numerous puddles. I marched on until I got to the closet and pulled it open.

A brown wooden broom was inside, surrounded by many boxes. My father hadn’t touched them in all the years he lived here. It apparently was full of things from his childhood.

I never looked into it, and still didn’t as I picked up the broom. I trekked back to the bathroom and put the broom down, setting myself to the strenuous task of cleaning up the mess.

_How could I tell Father about this?_ He’d definitely complain about having to waste money on a plumber.

I moved the broom slowly across the floor, watching it soak up water. Eventually, I put it in the sink. _Him and money. Ugh._

I have no idea what he’s thinking sometimes. He wasn’t that old; he was in his early forties, yet saving up for retirement. Why would people save for something that won’t even happen for another twenty or so years?

What do I know, though? I’m a young adult.

I squeezed as much water as I could out of the broom at the sink. Once that was over with, I dropped it on the floor again.

_Is this even how you use a broom?_ Father usually did the cleaning, not me. It was not my thing.

Now video games, those were more up my alley. I’ve been playing them since I was four or five years old, starting with _Pokémon Ruby_. I even remember my first starter, Torchic. Those were good times.

Until I lost the game cartridge. My life went to hell shortly afterward.

As I carried on with my task, I couldn’t help wondering: _What would have happened if I had gone into the pipe?_

Obviously, I would’ve been taken _somewhere_ if it worked like it did in Mario's games. It was impossible to know an exact location.

I grunted as my mop met the wall. I missed my one chance for an adventure! I could have gone and, well, who knows what would have happened next.

My mop met the wall again. I lifted it up. I moved on. Rinse, repeat.

_If I were lucky, I would’ve met Princess Peach and she’d be kidnapped. The Bros then would go rescue her._ I could have seen those two in action! _After that-_

The mop stopped, jolting me out of my trance. "Hm?" I lifted it up again.

Oh. It was the yellow pencil I had worn on my ear earlier. I bent down to grab it as it tried to roll away from me.

Before the bathroom fiasco, I had been completely focused on finishing my late essay for history class.

_I’m so brainless._ I settled the pencil back behind my ear before reasserting my grip on the broom. _I should have gone in when I had the chance. Father wouldn’t be able to yell at me if I had._ My gaze fell to the floor yet again.

The broom slipped from my grasp, making a splash in the water, and I did a double take where my pencil had been.

The memory of the red flash played through my mind. Didn’t it occur before I hit the wall?

_This can’t be happening._ I bent down, keeping my eyes on the red object on the ground.

First the pipe, and now a Mario hat, complete with the red "M" at the front.

I picked it up, sucking in my breath. The fabric, much like denim, was rough under my fingers.

I rotated the hat so that the "M" directly faced me.

_How did this end up here?_ That was pretty much a question for the ages. I knew there were a few copies of the Bros' hats in their universe, yet this one popped out the toilet all because of a toothbrush clogging it!

I lifted the hat above my head. The pipe had been real. The hat felt real. What evidence would I need to prove otherwise?

_It’s not Luigi’s hat..._ Being a _Super Mario_ fan, I preferred the green, skinnier brother. Sure, he was a coward, but Luigi always came through in the end. His jumps were higher than Mario's. Who cared if his traction sucked! He could often reach places that his bro couldn’t.

Luigi’s voice is lower and more serious too. That’s a thing I like in a person.

The, uh, seriousness, I mean.

Meanwhile, what did Mario have going for him? A cardboard personality. Smaller jumps that often sent me flying down bottomless pits. A squeaky voice; the tone of a guy enjoying himself even as he was about to burn in a pool of lava for the hundredth time. How could a guy be so upbeat when the princess got kidnapped on a weekly basis and always ended up being in another castle?

It’s not like I totally hated Mario. My problem is that he’s never had a consistent characterization.

I turned towards the mirror, which rested above the toilet and sink. Rotating the hat around, I watched the "M" in the reflection. _It's kinda big._

_You've seen how big that guy's head is, right? How do you expect the hat to fit?_

_Meh._ I threw it on. A portion of red, the front of the hat, blocked the top of my vision. I pushed it back.

My hair complimented the hat despite it being a shade closer to Daisy’s than Mario’s. _I should have brushed it earlier._

Strands curled around my ear and stopped right at my neck. I found it better to keep it short, what with how long hair wasted time that I could allocate to literally anything else.

As much as I’d hate to say it, that time could go into writing that stupid essay. I had to get back to my room soon.

_You know, I should wear red more often. It looks good on me._

Then I saw it. Something wrong with my face.

Warmth. The small smile plastered on my mirror image.

My mouth and eyebrows curved downwards into a scowl.

She copied me.

I glared at her as I tore the hat off.

She glared back.

The front doorbell rang and tore us apart.

 

"Father," I gasped, opening the front door.

The tall man on the porch held a brown briefcase in one hand and a bag of groceries in the other. His eyes lit up when he saw me standing there.

"Hey," he said. "Thanks for getting that for me.” He walked into the house.

I shut the door behind him. "You're, uh, home early."

He set down his stuff. “All the major roads are closed. I should've checked the news this morning."

"You forgot that I was staying home today?”

"Yeah, yeah," he chuckled. "You haven't missed a day of school this year.”

_Wish I could._ "I suck at getting sick."

"Guess you inherited my immune system." Father stretched his arms. "Could you put the groceries away? I need to take a shower."

_As long as you don't use the toilet._ Darn it! Maybe I _should_ have checked to see it worked first. "I'll, uh, do that."

"Thanks, Sammy." With that, he was on his way.

I picked up the grocery bag as he walked down the hallway towards the bathroom. My breath got caught in my throat as he went around the corner-

"Why is the floor wet?"

I’ve said it before, so I’ll say it again: _DARN IT!_ I’d forgotten about the hallway! "I took a shower earlier.”

"Did you forget a towel?" He now peeked out from the behind the corner.

"Uh, sure?"

"I'll wipe it up,” Father said. He lifted his arm up in a shrug and returned behind the wall. "Make sure you remember next time."

"Okay!" I called after him. _Thank goodness._ _  
_ I took the grocery bag again and rushed off to the kitchen.

 

Our expansive kitchen didn't fit a family of two and a cat. Despite this, it was ours.

On one end, as I almost walked into it, was the dinner table. Tabitha sat on top of it.

We exchanged glances.

I reached down to pat her on the head. "Hey.”

She whimpered and shivered pitifully as water dripped from her fur. Behind her was the radiator, which was pumping heat into the room.

"You’ll be fine," I told her, pulling my arm from behind my back. It held the Mario hat. "Would you mind if I left this here while I unpack?” I dropped it on the table and went across the room with the bag.

I sorted the items. Milk went in the fridge, as did the butter. Father's pretzels always were in the cabinet by the stove. And finally, a box of pasta.

"Heck yeah," I muttered. Maybe we were having spaghetti tonight. It would be a change from the excess bread Father bought last week.

I put the groceries away. Again, milk and butter went into the fridge...

In the background, Tabitha licked herself. I heard her grunts all the way from the stove.

Speaking of the stove, the pretzels had to be put away. Unfortunately, I was short.

_Why couldn’t I have inherited Father's height too?_ I barely could touch the middle shelf. Leaping up got me nowhere and I found it ridiculous to climb up to the shelves. What if Father walked in and saw me?

Worse, I could not squish the pretzels in with about a dozen jars on the bottom shelf.

The cat was still licking herself.

I came back to the table. All that way left was the pretzels. _Maybe I should let him figure it out._ And retreat to my room too while I was at it. There was homework to do.

I put the pretzel bag on the table.

Tabitha stopped what she was doing to stare at the bag. And before I knew it, she was sniffing it.

"That's not for you," I said. I reached behind her for the Mario hat.

The uncomfortably warm, hard table was all that was there.

_Huh?_ I peered around the cat.

It wasn’t there at all.

"Tabitha, what did you do to the hat?" I asked as I looked under the table.

I didn’t see it on the ground either.

_The hell?_ I lifted my head.

The Mario hat flopped over me.

I gasped. I reached up to grab ahold of it.

Tabitha and I traded glances.

I clenched the hat as I sat down. _How was the hat on my head again? I’m pretty sure that I put it down!_ I remembered doing that. It was clear as day in my mind, even!

As my hand shook, I lowered it back onto the table. _What if I were to throw it back?_ I let go of it and turned around.

The instant my eyes left the table, there was a sound, like if Tabitha had knocked down the hat.

I whirled around at that moment.

The hat was gone again.

I plucked it off my head instead. "Uh, hi."

I tossed it back, turning away again. It showed up again. This happened several more times.

I finally gave up after the tenth attempt. I held it to my chest.

What was going on here? This was not how Mario's hat behaved in the games. Once it was off, it was off, and that was that.

"Sam?" Father yelled. "Where's my toothbrush?"

_His toothbrush?_ Oh no.

"I have no idea!" I said. I glanced at the hat.

"I kinda need it!" he called back.

_Is he brushing his teeth in the shower again?_ “Don’t know!”

He went quiet, probably having gone back to his shower.

I went back to the bag, but a thought hit me there. _What if he found out about the whole toilet thing?_ Had he touched it yet?

I had to leave upstairs before he started yelling at me. Forget those pretzels!

I ran away, dashing down the hall towards the front entrance. Across from it was a staircase that I made a turn on to. After making another turn up the steps, I reached my bedroom. Or, as I liked to call it, my safe haven.

I got inside and locked it up. In its comforting safety, I put a hand to my pounding heart.

_He can’t tell me to go to my room when I am already there._ I jogged over to my desk, which was across the room from me, and tossed both the Mario hat and the pencil from my ear down. As I pulled out my armchair, I kept my eyes trained on the hat. _What am I supposed to do about this?_

I turned on the lamp above my desk.

No matter what I tried, the thing always came back to me. How was I supposed to get rid of it?

_Is it cursed? Will I need an exorcist?_

Maybe if I did believe in such as thing as demons.

* * *

_?_

_Is it cursed? Will I need an exorcist?_

The words echoed in his mind as he slowly woke up.

_I can’t even concentrate on this thing anymore! What was the point of the kettle? Since when did that matter?_

_What?_

_Maybe I’ll go back and throw this out later._ The mysterious voice continued.

Going by the higher-pitched tone, maybe it belonged to a girl? That was his best guess.

But what was going on? Why did he feel… Weightless?

_Stupid toothbrush._ The girl's voice groused.

_Toothbrush?_ He couldn't see. Everything was dark.

The voice spoke again. _I wasn’t paying attention for a_ second _! How did this thing come back that quick?_

_I'm not following._ And he would be if he wasn't already losing consciousness.

…

…

…


	2. Day One - Part Two

_Sam_

"I'm getting nowhere with this," I grumbled, tossing my pencil down.

Maybe it was time I gave up on the stupid homework. It was late and, heck, nobody’s perfect.

That stupid red hat of Mario's fell over my vision _again_. I huffed and tossed it back onto my desk.

_Stay!_ My mind screamed.

No use. I focused on dinner, which indeed had been spaghetti with marinara sauce, and there it was again over me.

_That’s another reason why Luigi's the better bro._ If I were dealing with the green machine's hat, maybe it would not fall over my face as often. _This can't be happening when I’ve got school tomorrow!_

The guys at school didn't need another thing to pick on me for!

Snow blanketed my street. The storm earlier this morning hadn’t been all that bad. I had no doubts that the town would have it cleared by tomorrow morning.

That when a brilliant idea hit me: what if I turned the hat around?

In my opinion, that looked stupid. A backward hat was one of those bad old fashion trends. If this thing wasn’t leaving me alone, though, I might as well try it.

I twisted the hat around. _THERE we go!_ This way, it wouldn't get in my way. How was I stupid enough not to see this solution until now? _Ha! Who's awesome now?_

I opened my eyes after that thought.

The hat’s shelf was there to greet me, hovering over my face.

"What the actual-"

 

That was it. Because of this stupid hat, I barely got anywhere with my writing.

It was time to hit the hay.

"Stay on the table," I ordered the Mario hat. "I swear that I’ll go to the kitchen and burn you over the stove if you keep this up."

What did you expect to happen as soon as I tried closing my eyes for a few seconds?

I buried my face into my sheets as the hat still clung to my head. _I give up._

Maybe I should forget about my perfect attendance record and not go to school tomorrow.

* * *

_?_

"Mmmph? Mmmmmppph?" _Why can’t I breathe?!_

I moved around, trying to find the air, and-

I pulled my face out of a pillow, gasping. "Mama mia!" I could’ve suffocated!

There was a single window in the dark room I was in. The curtains were shut. Barely any light came through it.

Where in the world was I? The last thing I had remembered was waking up briefly.

Some kid had gone on a tangent about toothbrushes and kettles. At least I _think_ there was a kettle involved. I dunno; I was kinda asleep still.

Okay. What about before that?

_Let'sa see. I woke up in the morning, went downstairs for breakfast, and-_

My brain hurt trying to think further.

What happened afterward? Why couldn't I remember?

After a minute, I tore the blanket covering me off. Maybe it would all come later.

I walked over to this door nearby. As I reached for it, something felt _off_.

My hand went to my head. I felt around.

It wasn't there.

I lowered my arm. Was it me having this brain fog or was my arm longer? There’s that knob too. I needed one glance at it to know that I was taller. Usually, I was level with one!

My hand touched my nose. _It's tiny?_ And my mustache was gone?!

"What’s going on?" As that came out of my mouth, I froze. I didn’t sound _remotely_ like that!

In my panic, I yelped. I flung myself forward.

The, um, bedroom door went crashing down the stairs.

I cringed as it settled on the flight below. _Whoops._

So that happened, but it wasn’t my number one concern right now.

I ran down the steps and over it.

The entrance to the house was at the bottom. A light came in from the two glass panels at its sides. There were two hallways to my left and another three to my right.

Thumping. A guy bolted from a hallway to the right, which was the closest one to the stairs.

He came to a stop and caught his breath in front of me.

"Uh, hi," I said.

The guy towered over me. He had short brown hair and wore gray PJ bottoms along with a white shirt.

"Sam,” he said, “what was that?"

_Sam? That’s not my name!_ I held up one of my hands. I had long, skinny fingers instead of white gloves. Below that was-

It’d be better if I don’t elaborate on that.

"Sam," the man repeated. He crossed his arms.

"Um…” How could I explain this? That door seemed pretty stable before I, er, attacked it. "It’s broken?"

“Why exactly would you rip the damn thing off its hinges?"

“Damn”. It had been years since I last heard that word.

"I panicked?" I said.

Behind the guy, a figure was moving. It made a noise like a "Meow."

_A cat?_

It laid on the floor by my "Dad's" feet.

"Dad" (Okay, I’m weirded out) sighed. "You know what? It's the middle of the night. We'll deal with it tomorrow." He started down the hall he came from. "Go to the bathroom and back to bed. School's tomorrow.”

Once he disappeared around the corner, I heard, “Good night.”

"N-night!" I called after him.

I was left standing there with the cat.

 

The bathroom was in the hallway to the top left. Once inside, I searched the walls for a switch. Then I squinted up at a few bright light bulbs.

Once my eyes adjusted to the light, I found out two things:

One, I was definitely a girl, with short brown bedhead hair and blue pupils and all of that. And unlike when I went adventuring with Cappy, the kid had no 'stache. My hat also dangled over the top of her head.

Two, the room smelled funny. It was kinda like cheese.

"That's not normal," I muttered, sitting on the closed basket.

Nothing was. It’s not every day that you wake up in another body not remembering stuff, thinking about your bro...

Hold on. What happened to Luigi? Where was he? Was he okay? Would he be okay?

_Don't be silly!_ I released a breath. This wasn’t a time to be panicking. _He’s fine._

Luigi had gone on adventures alone. He’s even saved me a few times! There was no way he couldn’t fill my shoes while I was wherever this place was.

Going back to me being a girl… There aren't many humans in the Mushroom Kingdom. There was only Peach, me, Luigi, Professor E. Gadd, Wario, and Waluigi. If anyone else came in, that'd be big news. Other than when Bowser kidnaps the princess, that is.

Maybe I’d somehow ended up in another kingdom? Was I in Metro? They did have some suburbs.

In the meantime, I had to work with this girl’s form. Cappy wasn't here to help me out, so who knows how long I could be stuck with it.

A digital clock ticking away by the sink read 12:30.

_It’s that late?_ Sam's dad mentioned school earlier. Guess that meant that she needed to go tomorrow. _Hoo boy._

Okay, so I’m twenty-four. It'd been a few years since I’ve done anything related to school. My last time there kiiiiiiinda ended with me getting thrown out. It’s not a subject I like talking about.

...It’s bad when you can’t draw a simple cube. Mine always come out wonky.

"Better not repeat that,” I said, wrinkling my nose. _And I probably should deal with that smell later._

Really, who could live with it?

I left the bathroom after shutting off the lights. I went back towards the entrance.

Except I’d completely forgotten about that cat from earlier. The furball decided to stalk me by sitting around there. Maybe it was hungry.

I could relate; who doesn’t love a midnight snack?

No way was I feeding it after it tripped me. I yelped and flung my arms out in front of me.

Unfortunately for me, my palms didn't find the floor first. My head did.

The cat yowled as I fell over it. When I finally settled on to the floor, I felt it shovel its way under me until it escaped from underneath one of my arms.

Everything went dark as it hissed at me.

 

The first thing I noticed when I woke up again were the whites of my hands. I sat up on my knees.

Wait a minute. Were my hands white? Like, white as snow?

Instead of being Sam's long and skinny, my hands were small and chubby. That white on them were gloves. Moving up from that, red sleeves. And over the red shirt, blue overalls. That meant-

"I'm back already!" I shouted, fingering my mustache. This was a miracle!

But if I was here, what had happened to Sam?

Cue the gagging.

I perked up. Where was that coming from? The bathroom?

It had to be. I remembered shutting the light off. Now it was back on.

I jogged back over there.

Sam was there hunching over the toilet. She trembled violently as she gripped its seat.

"Are you…?" Oh, who am I kidding? She wasn't okay!

I catapulted over the laundry basket, to her side, and right in the view of the toilet-

_Nope!_ I spun away to try and avoid barfing myself.

There was a towel hanging on the wall. I pulled it off and shoved it into her hands.

"Use this when you're ready,” I told her. “I'll flush."

"Th-thanks," she whimpered, taking the whole thing into her lap.

“Mh-hm!”

That cheese smell was gone and replaced by the smell of, how would I describe it, like barf? How would you know what barf smells like if everyone ate differently?

I’ll, uh, stop while I’m ahead.

Sam pulled away from the toilet. "Get rid of it. _Please_." She buried her face in the towel.

I reached over her and groped for the handle.

_Fwoosh!_

"There. It's gone." I crouched down next to her. _That was a lot. Where's the plunger at?_

The toilet gurgled. It didn't need my help.

_Forget it._ I returned my focus to Sam.

She breathed into the towel.

"Do you hav'ta do _that_ again?" I asked.

Her voice was muffled by the towel. "May-maybe, maybe not. I-I need a minute."

She took longer than that.

I ended up standing there by here as I counted the seconds in my head. _Fifty-six._

_Fifty-seven._

_Fifty-eight._

_Fifty-nine._

Four minutes later, Sam pulled back from the toilet. The towel fell into her lap. "There goes dinner."

"Oh well."

Her face flushed a bright red as she lifted her head. I noted how her pupils had turned brown.

I got to my feet and offered her a hand. "Let me help you up."

She stared between that and me. She recoiled away.

I offered up my best smile. Maybe she needed some encouragement?

_Or should I get outta here?_ It’s not every day a guy and girl are in a bathroom together. This was probably weirding her out.

Me too, now that I was thinking about it. Maybe I _should_ leave-

Sam spoke before I got the chance to. “You-You're...”

And I said, "It'sa me, Mario!"

Needless to say, she went back to the toilet.

 

Sam held on to me as she stumbled up the steps back to her room.

"Remember,” I whispered, “slow and steady."

"Ri-right,” she said.

We stopped near the top of the steps, where she sat down.

I cradled my hat in my arms as I sat next to her.

Sam had worn it when we left the bathroom. No idea how she stole it without me noticing, but I got it back when she nearly fell over in the hallway.

"Feeling any better?" I asked.

"Meh,” she replied. “I guess."

"’I guess’?"

She said nothing back.

I dug through my pockets. From there, I was pulling out all sorts of things. A pack of playing cards, a bottle of water, a ball of string, even a pamphlet for the Metro Kingdom. "Huh, forgot I had all of this."

"How?”

I glanced back up at her. “How what?”

“How are you storing that all in there?” she asked.

"Magic pockets," I simply said as I finally pulled what I needed out. "Oh, and here we go!"

Sam scooped the thing up from my hand. "A _mushroom_?"

"Trust me, you'll feel better after eating it,” I said.

I picked up the ball of string. Where’d that even come from?

Sam turned the mushroom over. We both glimpsed the pair of dots on its bottom half.

She lifted it to her mouth. "Guess I'll try it.”

“Wait!” I shouted.

She paused before she had eaten the top half of the ‘shroom. “What?”

I almost laughed at my random outburst. "You gotta eat the bottom first!”

“Why?"

"It tastes better."

Now she hesitated.

"Don’t worry about the “eyes”. Super mushrooms aren't sentient. They're grown that way."

“Huh.”

I nodded.

"Here goes, I guess." She bit into the tannish part. Her face scrunched up as she chewed.

"How is it?" I asked, leaning closer to her. "Good?"

She swallowed and nodded. "It tastes really sweet.”

"That’s how they normally are.”

"I’m honestly more of a spicy person."

I chuckled. "You'd like one-ups better. They’re pretty spicy.” I went back to my pockets, stopping myself as I remembered, "Oh, right. Luigi's the one who always carries them. Maybe another time."

"That’s okay,” Sam said.

A few more bites later, she turned her head. Her jaw dropped.

I instantly remembered: _the door!_ "That's a long story."

"You _broke_ it?" she cried.

"You see…"

 

Sam didn't like my explanation. At times, she glowered at me as she ate the ‘shroom.

Then we got to the part me possessing her.

"You were in my _body_?!” she shouted.

“It wasn’t my fault!” I protested. “I woke up that way. The cat tripping me was what separated us."

"You’ve invaded my privacy, possessed me, and now you’re real. What’s next? I wake up?"

"This isn't a dream,” I said. “I'm alive." _Is she going to ask me to pinch her next?_

Instead of that, she snorted and said, "This is a _pipe_ dream."

"Ya know, I don't work as a plumber much anymore."

"So why do you still dress like that?" Sam asked, gesturing at my clothes.

"They're comfy and easy to wear."

She threw her arms into the air and said, "Okay, that was a _Pokémon_ reference. This has got to be a dream."

" _Pokémon_?" Like, poke-a-man? Poke-ye-mon? Did this thing involve poking at all? Where am I even going with this?

"You know, like Pikachu?"

"Pikachu?"

Sam frowned.

"Do you know who Sonic the Hedgehog is?" she asked.

"Sonic? Is that another _Pokémon_?" Was I right in guessing they’re creatures some sort?

"What about Link? Or Samus?” Seeing no response from me, she added, “Kirby? Hell, maybe _Pit_?"

"Are they _Pokémon_ too?"

She facepalmed.

"No, really. Are those part of that _Pokémon_ thing?”

* * *

_Sam_

I couldn’t believe it! Mario, _Super_ Mario, didn’t recognize the names of any of the other Nintendo heroes or heck, even Sonic?

_This is a dream. This has to be a dream._

But my mind kept flickering back to his touch. That, and the mushroom, hat, and pipe. All of that had felt too real for my liking.

“Oh my god...” I sighed.

Mario clasped his hands together. "What?"

"Today has been a mess. You possessed me, this hat won't leave me alone,” I took it off as I mentioned it, “the toilet exploded, and my cat was a jerk when I tried to rescue her-”

He covered his mouth in an attempt to hold back laughter. It failed, and I cringed when his voice rang loud and clear through the house.

I spoke again. "Mario, my dad could probably hear you.”

He nodded and whispered, "Can ya please slow down. You're going a million miles an hour."

I lowered my head. He was right; I couldn’t go crazy in front of the hero of the Mushroom Kingdom _._

_Sure,_ my mind spat. _You already puked in the toilet twice._

_SHUT UP, ME!_ I bit into my mushroom.

"You know, your dad said that you’re going back to school tomorrow.”

"Yeah?" I definitely had to back to bed soon.

"And your name's Sam?"

"Yep."

"Is that supposed to be short for Samantha?"

"No, it’s Sam."

"Samantha's a pretty name."

"My birth name _is_ Sam,” I elaborated. “My parents didn’t know I was a girl until they had me.” I finished the bottom half of the ʼshroom.

He silently watched me.

After I swallowed my food, I spoke up again. "What? They can't give me a gender-neutral name?"

The Marioverse had Birdo, who most people thought to be a girl. Couldn’t it be the same for me?

"No, no,” Mario said. “I'm cool with that."

I studied the top half of the mushroom, which was red with the white spots.

As I did, he asked another question. "Where are we? The Metro Kingdom?"

I was about to take another bite when he did. I withdrew the mushroom from my mouth,

He continued speaking. “No, you wouldn’t be dressed that way if we were there. I swear, everyone’s _always_ in formal attire over in ND.”

I stayed quiet.

Mario pondered next, “Maybe we’re in Sarasaland or the Mushroom Kingdom outskirts? Or Delfino?” He paused, his face scrunching up in thought, and muttered, “...Nope. Doesn't feel like it."

"None of the above. Have you heard of America?"

His answer came as, "America?"

Wow. He was clueless. "You’re not in your own world anymore, Mario."

He stared at me.

"You might be stuck here,” I said. "We don’t have an elaborate pipe system like back in your world."

"Couldn't I get home by plane or boat or something?"

I pushed my other hand into my face. _Idiot._ "What of "you aren’t in your own world anymore" do you not understand?"

"Didn’t you say, "you might not be in your own world anymore, Mario?”

I stared at him, exasperated. Did he not get the point? "You’re _trapped_ here, dinglebrain. There’s no such thing as the Mushroom Kingdom or Sarasaland here. We don’t have mushrooms, giant evil turtles, pipes, and who knows what else there is back in your homeworld." Lifting my face, I finished with, "You’re in what I like to call "Hell"."

With my speech over, I went to gauge Mario's emotion.

His mouth was open. Had he gone into shock?

"The mushroom worked pretty quickly if you're already getting excited,” he said.

"Did you at all _hear_ me?" I huffed.

He muttered under his breath.

"Do you no comprendo?” I asked. “I don't speak Italian.”

Before I could go on, Mario covered my mouth with a glove. His eyes moved away from mine.

My heart quickened as I followed them down the stairs.

Father was glaring at us from the bottom step. "Sam?"

Mario removed his hand from me. "Sir, I can explain.”

Father chose to ignore him. "Sam, what in the world are you doing up?”

I found myself dumbfounded. "I, um, er, well, uh." I wasn’t able to think all that straight even with this sudden burst of energy. Was that what the mushroom was supposed to do?

Yet somehow in the midst of my brain fog, a question was able to worm itself out: how exactly would you explain the shouting or the Italian guy?

Mario spoke in my steed, or he at least tried to. " We, uhhhhh..." Now he looked between me and Father.

I got up, wiping my mouth of my meal from earlier. " _I_ can explain what’s going on."

Father made his way up the stairs until he towered over me.

Mario, meanwhile, moved up a step. He was whimpering. "I did nothing wrong! Your kid, she was'a freaking out and I was trying to help her and I don't have a doctor's degree since I didn't finish school so now she might be hyper on a mushroom...”

Father still ignored him. He leaned into me.

I swallowed.

"Go to bed and stop yelling your head off,” he ordered.

His eyes were sunken in from what seemed to be a severe lack of sleep. If the anger contained within them could burn, I'd be on fire.

Then, he moved away and added, "Good night."

He spun around and stormed down the steps.

When he had walked passed the corner and out of my sight, I inspected the open doorway that led into my bedroom.

“This,” I said, “is going to suck.”

 

Of course, my reaction after being yelled at was to go to bed. There was a lot for me to process. And along with that, I had freaked out in front of the hero of the Mushroom Kingdom.

Mario had the same idea as me, as he ended up clunked out on the chair by my desk despite my best efforts to kick him out.

I watched him snore. He used one of the seat’s armrests as a pillow.

_How could anyone be comfortable like that?_

From what I knew from _Dream Team_ , Luigi could sleep anywhere and not be bothered. Maybe it was the same with his big bro?

I laid down.

Mario’s hat squished itself between the pillow and my head yet again. With a groan, I sat back up and took it off. I tossed it over by its actual owner.

He didn’t budge when it landed next to his face.

Thinking about it now, it’s funny how I said I didn’t like the guy earlier. Now he was asleep in my room.

"Um, good night," I whispered to him, digging under my sheets.

Mario continued to snore away.

I wondered for the hundredth time: was this at all real? It could be that tomorrow I would wake up and he would be gone. Father hadn’t even seen him back on the stairs.

Maybe that was proof that I was going crazy. Or maybe I shouldn’t have eaten that mushroom.

_We’ll see about that._

I fell asleep, dreading that I would have to go back to school tomorrow.


	3. Day Two - Part One

_Sam_

My head was throbbing when my alarm woke me up the next morning. I forced myself up despite the pain.

Nobody was there at my desk.

 _I guess that whole thing last night really_ was _a dream._ I mean, who meets Mario of all people after they puke in a toilet?

But who also gets hit in the face by a hat after finding a green pipe? I couldn’t ignore the large red thing hanging over my head.

I took it off and moved to throw it at my wide-open doorway.

A wave of nausea hit me. It forced me to lay back down in bed.

 _Can’t deny that I’m not feeling well._ If what Mario had told me was true, the mushroom should’ve helped me recover.

Maybe my pain was proof enough that he hadn’t been real.

 _I got to get to school!_ I yelled at myself. If I remembered right, I had a test or two I had to take today. _Come on!_

My perfect attendance record that Father jabbered about yesterday would be ruined if I didn’t show up. Even worse, I wouldn’t know the homework for this weekend!

I got up again and managed to swing my legs over the bed. My head still throbbed.

 _We have aspirin,_ I reassured myself. I could have sworn that I had seen a few packets lying around the bathroom the other day. _Those will help._

I held onto one of the bedposts as my feet struggled to carry my weight. After a minute of overcoming more nausea, I let go of the bedpost and began my way towards the stairs.

My legs buckled as soon as I left the bedpost. My hands reached desperately for it again as I wobbled back and forth on shaky feet.

A _THUD_ boomed as my body hit the floor.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I shouted. I pulled myself back up to my wobbly knees.

My nausea won, sending me back to the floor with another _THUD_.

The wooden stairs outside creaked. A short, chubby figure rushed into the room.

I recognized him in an instant. Who wouldn’t?

The man before me was Mario. The hero of the Mushroom Kingdom and _Nintendo_ ’s mascot was standing within my room _again._

Mario skidded to a stop beside me.

 _I’m not crazy?_ my mind shouted.

The plumber’s worried expression softened as he asked, “You alright?”

I attempted to stand a third time.

He kneeled down and tossed my arm over his back. “You’re as red as a tomato.”

That was odd for him to say with how his shirt was a bright red color.

“I have to go to school today,” I told him.

He looked me over and said, “Maybe you shouldn’t be going _anywhere_ looking like that.”

“I _need_ to go!”

“ _No.”_ His dark brown eyebrows fell over his narrowed eyes. In other words, he was glaring at me.

I flinched away. _Maybe_ it was best that I didn’t argue with him right now.

“Sam,” he said as he lifted me up, “if you’re gonna be flopping all over the place, that’s not okay. Get more sleep.”

“I just woke up!” I shouted at him.

“You need more.” I had opened my mouth when he added, “I was a doctor for a while. I know what I’m talking about.”

He led me back to the bed.

The mattress trembled as I slid back under my sheets.

“Want to explain why your “medicine” didn’t work?” I growled. “Father probably thinks I’m crazy now.”

Mario walked over to the stairs.

“Well?”

“Maybe the full effect hasn’t kicked in,” he said. “I’ve heard they take longer for people not native to the Mushroom Kingdom.”

“It takes longer than _five or six hours_ to work?” I gestured to an electronic clock on my nightstand, which read 6:05. “And what do you mean you’ve “heard”? You’re the “doctor”.”

His eyebrows furrowed up. “Listen to me. I can tell when people aren’t well.”

“I’m going, okay? I’m not staying home.”

He ignored me as he turned and walked out of the room. I heard an unmistakable, “Mama mia.”

I sank into my sheets. _Fudge._

It was ironic how Father and I were talking about my “perfect” immune system yesterday. I’d never been out sick in all the years I’d lived here.

 _Now I won’t be able to take those tests or know when that stupid astronomy project is due._ Unlike the other schools in the area, mine didn’t have a website where you could get information from. They _were_ working on such a feature; unfortunately for me, they had no plans to implement it until after I graduated from Havenland High.

Occasionally I wonder what the board is thinking when they make decisions like that.

 

I sat in bed for a while and sometimes checked the time on my phone. The bus would have come in an hour and a half if I had started getting ready at six.

As the clock hit seven, I lost hope that I would shake off this stupid headache and catch it.

The rising sun’s light was blocked by my window’s dark curtains. I wouldn’t have opened them even if I could stand up. I’d rather not blind myself this morning.

There was a knock. Moving away from the curtains, I found Mario at the doorway.

He pulled his fist away from the wall.

“What now?” I grumbled. _Wish he hadn’t kicked the door down._ I literally felt naked without it. That door let me be with my thoughts and the quiet it offered was often calming after a long day.

“I’ve got good news,” he said.

 _Good news?_ Like what? Did he find the aspirin? Did he even know what aspirin was?

“The TV says that a bunch of schools was canceled. What’s the one you go to?”

 _What?_ “Havenland High.” Was there no school today? How?

He fingered his chin and rubbed it. After a few seconds, he replied with, “I’m pretty sure that was one of them on the list.”

I stared at him in disbelief.

That sounded _way_ too good to be true. What had happened to make them cancel again?

Well, the wind yesterday had been pretty bad. An old tree in one of our neighbors’ yards had gone down. Could that be it?

“Is Father here?” I asked.

“Haven't seen him,” Mario said.

 _Good._ Maybe he had been able to get to work regardless of whatever happened out there. Which was also good, since I didn’t want to be yelled at. “Now what?”

“How are you feeling?”

“My head still hurts.”

“Any plans to hit the hay?”

“Nope.”

He came over and sat on my bed.

“So,” he said, “you wanna go downstairs soon?”

I pulled my legs in towards me as I glared at him. That was my personal space he was invading!

Getting the message, he scooted to the mattress’ edge. “I’m cooking breakfast.”

“Like what?” I asked. Father and I didn’t often eat breakfast here. I had mine at Havenland High’s cafeteria.

“Eggs.”

“Eggs? That’s it?”

“There’s bread. We could have toast.”

“Make that for yourself. If I have even _one more loaf_ I will puke again.”

He shuddered. That hadn’t been a good experience for either of us. “Alrighty.” He got back on his feet. “I’ll come back up later when it’s about ready. Deal?”

“Fine, sure.”

With that, Mario left my room.

Warm air blew around my fingers as I exhaled.

Funny how I had been calling this guy out for having a cardboard personality the other day. Now he was here in my life.

Seeing him trying his best to help me, like with the towel and the mushshroom, was already causing me to rethink my previous thoughts. They were nice gestures on his part even if he was already a good guy.

 _It would still be cool if Luigi were here,_ a part of me thought. How would have this situation played out if I’d met him instead? Would he have made me stay in bed? Would he have helped me even after being disgusted by my toilet?

Perhaps I would never know.

 

When Mario returned, he allowed me to lean on him as we went downstairs to the kitchen. He did, although, grumble the whole way down. Not my fault if he was short enough to be used as an armrest.

I sat down at the dining table while he rushed over to the stove and hopped on top of a chair there.

“You left the fridge open,” I said.

Mario rubbed the back of his yet again hatless head. He chuckled. “Maybe I got too excited when I found the eggs.”

"Father doesn’t go grocery shopping much." I took off his stupid hat, which yet again had found its way back to me.

He twirled the spatula around before plunging it under the scrambled eggs in the pan. "Not good, you know. How do you live?"

"Didn’t you see the leftover pasta in there?"

"Pasta's not breakfast." He pointed the spatula at me now. "It’s not alfredo either." He paused for a moment. “Or carbonara. Should’ve been carbonara.”

"Not my fault." _Pasta with marinara is much better._

There was a whole carton of eggs by the stove.

"How many of those are you using?” I asked.

"A few,” he said. His eyes shifted upwards and he put the spatula down. "Is that a problem?"

I realized that he was focusing on his hat and took it off again. "No."

Mario seemed to morph into a red blur as he rushed over, ripped the hat from my hands, and plopped it over his messy hair.

My char screeched against the floor as I shouted, "Okay, _aggressive much_?"

Mario finished fixing his hat, a sheepish look plastered on his face. "Sorry.”

Now a sharp smell entered my nose. I glanced around him.

Smoke had begun rising from the stove. The flames were on high and were consuming the sides of the frying pan.

"Uh, Mar?” I found myself shouting. “The eggs are on fire!”

"Mar?" Aside from his mouth opening to speak, he didn’t move.

 _Oh, forget you!_ I attempted to stand.

My nausea returned. It was determined to keep me down.

As I fell into my seat, I told Mario, “The pan’s on fire! I don’t want my house burning down next!”

His confusion went away as he spun around to see the smoke. He gasped.

“I was sure I lowered the flame!” he yelped.

That was worthy of a facepalm from me.

Mario rushed over to the stove, coughing as he inhaled the smoke.

I dug my hand further into my face. I watched between a small gap in my fingers as he fiddled with knobs on the stove.

A little fan overhead him whirred to life. He grumbled as he clambered back to solid ground.

I put my hand down.

“Luigi’s better at cooking,” I caught him saying. “Guess I’ll use the toaster oven next time.”

“Is the food okay?” I asked.

“Oh, everything’s fine,” Mario reassured me. Yet under his cheerful attitude, I could see his grin almost falter. “I’ll eat the burnt chunks.”

 

Mario came back over to the table with three plates. The two empty ones were set before me and his seat. The third one that held the eggs was put down between us.

I picked at the large platter with my fork.

He had ended up getting carried away with making our breakfast. There was an empty carton in the trash now.

 _It won’t matter much to Father,_ I reassured myself. _He doesn’t like eggs. It’ll be fine!_

Mario got a couple of burnt chunks for his plate.

We ate quietly for the next few minutes.

As I was polishing off my share, he spoke up. “I’ve been thinking about what happened last night."

“Yeah?”

“Remember how you told me that I’ve got no way home?"

"Do you “comprendo” now?" I snickered.

"If there was a pipe that brought me to your world, there has to be another hidden nearby.”

"Guess you have a point?" How could I be sure when yesterday was the first time I had seen one in real life?

He shot out of his seat. I noticed a small pillow underneath Mario. It wasn't one of ours. I guess it came from his “pockets of holding”.

Whatever the case, he was standing on his chair and pointing at me.

"That’s why _you_ hav’ta help me get home!" he said.

I flinched away, asking, "Are you going Uncle Sam on me?"

"It'll be fun!" he said, ignoring my comment. "Of course, you’ve got stuff to do. I can hang around if you’re busy. But we’ll hav’ta go pipe hunting when you get back."

"How? We don’t have an idea where any could be, and I didn’t say that I would _help_ you.”

He was on a roll. "Which is why we search secluded areas, like forests or the sewers. That’s where all the unmapped ones are, after all-"

I cut in. "You want me to walk in _sewage_? I've done enough throwing up for a week, thank you very much-"

He cut back in, clasping his hands together. "I gotta get home. Everyone back there has to be worrying about me, especially Luigi-"

I cut back- Forget it. Anyone could see where this was going. "Can't the great and powerful Mario do this by himself? When I found that pipe, I didn't want a hat constantly harassing me." As I finished speaking, I tore that stupid thing off my head.

"The pipe, not me." He collapsed back into his seat. "So are you gonna help me or what? No way I wanna be alone in this "America" place."

"Um." I ate the last of my eggs, splattered in ketchup, to shut myself up. _Go adventuring with_ Mario, _of all people?_ _Here?_

_People will think you're even more ridiculous running around with an overexcited short guy._

_No, wouldn't that make me more_ popular _? He's Nintendo's mascot, for crying out loud!_

_This sounds stupid. We could be aimlessly searching for a way back to his world for a while._

_Oh, forget you!_

I came back around to a white glove waving in my face.

"Hellooooo, Mushroom Kingdom to Sam."

I turned to my left. Now the red plumber was standing next to me.

He chuckled. "You're still awake. That's good." He picked up my plate and stacked it over his own.

"Thanks,” I said.

He walked over to the sink and dropped the dishes into it. "No problem. Was the food okay?” He laughed as he next said, “You can see that I’m not all that good at cooking.”

I used the chair to help prop me up. "The eggs were fine.”

I again noticed his eyebrows, which rose when he saw me upright. He decided to focus on the sink instead. "By the way, I wanna see if I can fix that door of yours.” He stopped what he was doing to stare at his gloves. A few seconds later, he shrugged and tore both of them off. “You know, as an apology for last night."

You have no idea how much I would _love_ to lock myself in my room, especially if Mario didn't end up sleeping there again. People needed their privacy, after all. And believe me, I needed it _bad_. "How would you do it? We don't own a screwdriver. Or whatever it takes to fix a door.”

Mario pulled this large object out of nowhere and plopped it to the floor without glancing away from the dishes.

My eyes widened. That had to be his mallet from the _Mario and Luigi_ games!

"I can figure it out,” Mario said. He smiled when he saw my expression. “You'd be surprised what can be done with this little guy."

Did this mean that the _M &L _series was “canon”? They had to be; I used to love those games. Like-

 _This isn’t a good time to fangirling,_ my mind reminded me.

I focused back on the conversation at hand. "Don’t break the door if you plan to go that route.”

"Trust me, I got this. You focus on getting better.” He went back to the sink. "Don't forget that we're hunting for a pipe soon."

"Wait a second,” I said. “I didn't agree to that, you son of a-"

A car horn. I almost jumped out of my seat.

"How appropriate,” I grumbled.

"Since I first woke up,” he said, “there's been this gap in my memory.”

"Amnesia, you mean?"

"Guess so. I have no idea how I ended up here.”

Warm air blew out my nose. _Maybe you went down the wrong pipe._

“I'm not as worried about Luigi as much as I am for the princess. Luigi’s proven he can handle things on his own. There was this whole thing where Bowser tried to marry Peach, though.” He stopped to watch me again. “Do you, uh, understand anything that I'm saying?"

"Yeah, I know. You traveled the world to stop Bowser from marrying her in your last adventure.” I was hoping I was getting that right, what with _Super Mario Odyssey_ coming out a few months back. “What you’re saying is that you want to get home to protect her."

"Exactly. Can I have your help now?" His sky-blue eyes gained this pleading look.

I folded my arms.

"Please? You gotta help the stranded guy!"

I directly met his gaze. Any tension in my body seemed to fade as I stared into them.

Even for a person as reluctant as me, I often couldn't stand watching others beg. Was it a leftover from when I was younger?

When I actually cared?

 _Now's not the time to dwell on that._ I let go of the chair that had been propping me up and stood over Mario. I was a foot taller than him.

"Fine, I'll help you-” I stopped and looked down. “ _What the hell_?"

He had gone to hug me. Or maybe he grabbed me so I wouldn’t fall over.

I squeaked as he squeezed me tightly. That _was_ a hug.

"Thank you!" Mario cried. "You're not gonna regret this, Sam. It'll be fun!"

I put my hand on his oversized head to untangle him from me.

However, I found myself stopping as he pressed that big head of his against me. He was covered head-to-toe in clothing yet radiated warmth.

To me, that felt… Good? Was it because he was warm on a winter day?

My eyelids closed. I leaned him.

A voice inside me screamed.

I ignored it. I felt myself relax.

Other than my head, which fell limp, the rest of my body had other plans. My muscles locked in place.

A voice within me cried, _EXCUSE ME, WHAT THE_ HELL _ARE YOU DOING?_

Mario hadn’t noticed anything that was happening, as he was still hugging me. He squeezed me again.

_If he doesn’t let go, you should push him away._

_But that’s rude!_

_I don’t want to be crushed to death._

Before my hand could latch on to him, he pulled back. He brandished his hat at me. "Taking this back while I'm at it."

"Fi-fine with me." I allowed myself to relax now. _The stupid thing will come back later._

And darn it, touchy-feely shenanigans aren't my thing!

Um. Yeah.

Sometimes I wonder if I should shut up.

 

I fled the kitchen soon after that whole thing with Mario. Or, you know, I tried to.

He had to help me walk to the living room. There, the TV was already on and it was flipped to a cartoon channel.

Scratch that. It was a _kiddie_ channel. There was a pink bunny on the TV screen. It bounced away as the show’s name fell down and replaced it.

“ _Fluffy Bunny_?” I said as I collapsed onto the couch. “Seriously?”

Mario sat next to me and picked up the remote.

“What are you?” I asked him. “Twenty-five?”

“Twenty-four.”

“What the hell?” I should have expected this. A childish man would obviously watch childish shows. “Could you put the channel eight news on?”

A moment of him fiddling with the remote later:

“Ya see,” the man on TV said, “the roads are still slippery after this latest storm. I can not stress enough about how dangerous this can be.” He gestured at a traffic map behind him.

Mario leaned back into his seat. “I’m not driving.”

“Father is.” I could see one of my neighbors shoveling her drive from our window. Other than that, the white snow had barely been touched by cars and human feet.

“He’ll be fine.”

I nodded and settled into my seat.

The time on the cable box hit 7:30 as the news went to commercial.

I laid my head down on the armrest. _My bus driver would’ve been here already._

That, or he would be a few minutes early. Everyone he picked up often complained of how he never gave them time to run to the bus before he flew off into the sunrise. Last year, there had even been parents petitioning to get him fired.

Their pleas, unfortunately, weren’t answered by the board or the bus company. Guess they were fine keeping around a guy who blew past our street’s stop sign five times a week.

“Will they show the closings again?” I asked. “I should check the list to make sure.”

“Trust me, Sam,” Mario said. “I wouldn’t lie to ya.”

“Let me see it for myself-”

A car horn went off, I should say, _several_ times.

I spun around.

Right in front of my house was a bright yellow bus. Three figures were running towards it from a nearby house.

I leaped off the couch. “What the hell?”

I was _not_ making a mistake. There were _no_ other buses from my district or other nearby ones that came this way. They weren’t as obnoxiously loud as the one my driver had too. That bus was unmistakably _mine._

And here I was sitting around in my pajamas!

My angry gaze fell upon Mario.

“You _did_ lie to me,” I hissed. “I should be going back today.”

He kept direct eye contact with me as he spoke. “Hey, I’m sorry-”

“Shut up!” I screeched.

The bus’ horn went off again.

I continued watching the scene outside in disbelief. Anger coursed through my veins, keeping me upright even through my pounding headache.

“I’m going to kill you,” I growled at Mario.

Wow me for making death threats towards _Nintendo_ ’s mascot.

My legs buckled beneath me. I reached down for the armrest to steady myself.

That didn’t help. My legs gave out. As they did, my hand fell away from the couch.

There was a gasp. A pair of hands reached over to catch me as I fell. I felt them lift me up.

That plumber had some pretty great reflexes.

Yet as I saw his anxious eyes, my consciousness was already fading.

_Darn it._


	4. Day Two - Part Two

_Mario_

“Sam!” I shouted. I laid her against the couch.

She moaned.

Good, she’s responding. “Are you alright?”

Her eyes slowly fluttered open. Eventually, she mumbled a “Huh?”

I sat down next to her.

Sam’s hand flew up to her hair. She relaxed when she found my hat not there.

I put it back on. “I asked if you’re doing okay.”

She pushed herself up. “Tha-that’s the second time I’ve lost consciousness in two days. The first was after that stupid hat of yours showed up. I banged my head on the wall.”

If there was one thing I learned from my brief job as a doctor, it was the signs of a concussion. A couple of symptoms seemed to be here with Sam.

“I think I know what’s happening to you,” I said. “Let’s get you back on the couch.”

She didn’t protest as I grabbed her hand and helped her up.

Once she had sat down, I dug through my pockets and got out a notepad and pen.

_I should thank Weegee for telling me to carry these,_ I thought as I wrote down:

**(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)**

_Possible Concussion Symptoms?_

  * _A headache_

  * _Fainted twice (Or three?)_

  * _Vomited (Ew)_

  * _Nausea_




**(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)**

“A concussion?” Sam shouted. She held her head as she scanned my handwritten notes. “M-maybe all of that on top of seeing imaginary people.”

“Again,” I told her, “I’m real.”

She wasn’t going to get over that, was she?

That bus driver outside honked his horn again.

I glanced out the window. Why was the bus still here? “How hard did you hit your head?”

“If I remember right,” Sam said, “it was hard.”

“Why didn’t you tell your dad about that?” I asked. “You should’ve gone to the hospital.”

That horn went off again.

“Shouldn’t your driver have left already?”

When I came back to the scene outside, there was a, uh, thing going on.

“Oh boy.”

A big truck had parked in the middle of the street. I could see the bus driver from here, yelling at it. Given how angry he seemed, maybe it was good that we couldn’t hear him.

Sam sat up and watched what was going on with me.

_“_ BEEEP _!”_

She put her head back down. _“Welp, there goes my perfect attendance.”_

“Since when does that matter?” I asked. I put down the notepad. “You won’t hav’ta go in for a day or two. Wouldn’t a break would be nice?”

“It’s Friday. I’d be out of commission during the week-” Sam stopped suddenly.

“You’ll be able to get some rest,” I said.

_“Did he…”_

I picked up a frilly pillow and hugged it. “Did I what?”

Her mouth fell open. I noticed how it didn’t move as I heard, _“Can you hear this?”_

“Ye-yeah,” I said. “I can.”

She shrunk away from me. “How…?”

I shrugged. I knew this was telepathy. Luigi and I had moments of them growing up. They were why I was reunited with my bro when we were babies. We’ve had moments of finishing each other’s sentences and feeling each other’s pain. You know, pretty much all of that twin stuff. Though, we never did that “creepy twins” thing you see in the movies. I wonder if anyone would be scared of that. Or would it be funny?

Don’t mind me; I’m running my mouth again.

“Okay, this is getting too close for comfort. People here don’t have psychic powers or plumbers who somehow possess you overnight and make you puke or pipes-”

“Or pipes in their toilets,” I finished for her. “We’ve been all over this.”

“When I was younger, I imagined a meeting with the Mario Bros. But never like this!” Sam shouted, standing up. Oddly enough, she was able to stay on both feet. “It doesn’t help that you invaded my privacy like three times in two days, the third being in my mind.”

An image of a trash bin popped up in my mind. It was followed by her thinking, I won’t have to mention a thing to Dad if I kick him out now.

I focused back on her.

She tightly clenched her teeth as air blew out through her nose. _Stupid plumber._

I held the frilly pillow defensively in front of me. “Sam, it’s okay.”

Sam’s bus was leaving now. So much for that.

“You’ve had it rough, but please give me another chance. I barely have an idea where I am aside from this place being called Havenland and I have no clue why I’m here and I never got to try the local pasta, which I hope isn’t marinara ‘cause I’m tired of that stuff, and…”

 

I found myself on Sam’s porch clutching that pillow from the couch.

Sam finished locking up and turned away from the front door. _“There. That's not my problem anymore.”_

“I still hear you!” I yelled at the house.

_“GO AWAY!”_

I covered my ears, but it didn’t do anything for me. Her voice echoed in my mind, loud as ever.

_Yeesh!_ I sat down on the porch steps.

You know, something’s strange about her. When the telepathy thing started, she was able to stand on her own and throw me out! Had I been wrong about the whole concussion thing?

Guess I did waste a week of my life learning that “doctor” stuff.

“I’ll leave her alone for a bit,” I mumbled, shivering. Would she be more willing to forgive me after having some time to herself, as she liked jabbering about?

There was snow all over the place. It was on people’s yards, in the street, and covering all the trees and bushes. Hope she changes her mind before I freeze to death out here.

I could use firebrand to try and warm myself up, but it didn’t compare to a fire flower’s warmth or, heck, a regular winter coat. As to why I say that it’s ‘cause firebrand takes forever to charge up.

Hey, at least it’s an option. I flexed my left hand and felt some heat collect under my glove. It faded away as I cradled that pillow Sam had left me with.

I squeezed it.

Despite the pillow’s fluffy appearance, there was this rectangular spot in there.

Wait, what’s that?

I flexed the pillow. Strangely enough, that spot didn’t change no matter how I messed with it. It even felt hard when I pressed down on it.

What’s in there?

I searched for a zipper and pulled on it. When the pillow was wide open, I stuck my arm inside.

I ended up fishing a skinny light blue box from the pillow’s white stuffing. The back end of a disc faced me.

A CD? I took the case out. “How’d this get in here?”

Ugh. How stupid am I? Somebody obviously put it there.

Why hide it? What could be on it?

Let’sa move on.

Inside the case was the CD. Of course. On it was a picture of this guy in a yellow cat suit, with a red background.

I found myself violently shaking my head.

Wait. No. What? That couldn’t be right.

I opened the case and studied the picture on the disc.

Yeah, that guy. I knew that guy! I was right!

The guy in the picture had my face. The ‘stache was shaped like mine too.

That was me.

I lowered the disc. What was this? Sam had said this world wasn’t part of mine. Yet that guy there was me. “Super Mario” was even part of the title. There were people who called me that back home.

I’d never seen anything like it. There’s this whole counsel thing we have once a month when deciding what products go under my name, what with me being a superstar and all. This thing never showed up there. Nobody approved of this!

I stood back up, holding both the pillow and the CD case. I went up to the welcome mat.

_“There’s no way you’re coming back in here.”_

I looked to my left.

Sam met my eyes through the living room window.

“Open up now!” I yelled. I waved the case at her.

_“Who do you think you are? My dad?”_

“I’m an adult!”

_“So am I. That means I have the right to kick you out.”_

“You’re probably only eighteen or nineteen. Since when does that make you qualified to throw people out onto the street?”

Her telepathic voice rose. _“If we’re being ageist, that mustache makes you look like you’re forty.”_

“I’m twenty-four!” I yelled at her. I knocked on the door. “If I were to hit it hard enough, this door would go down too. How’d you like to explain that to your dad?”

_“How would you? You’d be the one responsible.”_ She glanced around the street. _“How is nobody out here with all your yelling?”_

“Your dad thinks you’re the one who broke the bedroom door. If this other one were to go down, he’d blame you again, not me.”

She folded her arms. _“Oh, blah blah, whatever.”_

“Okay, fine.” I glanced at the disc’s case. “Can you explain something to me?”

_“No.”_

“Sam, what’s Nintendo?”

Silence on her end. I wondered if she was ignoring me now.

I took a second look through the window.

Sam was still there.

I waved the case at her.

When she saw that, her expression changed. It went from a glare to, um, confusion, I guess?

Oh great. Now I’m also confused.

_“How did you get that?”_ she asked.

“It was in the pillow you left me with,” I said, lowering my arm. “Can you let me in?”

Sam disappeared from the window.

The front door opened a few seconds later. The two of us stood there staring through the screen.

Finally, she stepped aside to let me back inside. Going by her frown, she wasn’t thrilled about it.

Neither was I as I pushed the case towards her. “Is that me?”

“No, that’s Luigi,” she said.

I just stood there.

“Yes, it’s you,” she elaborated. “That’s a video game about you.” _I didn’t think about the Super Mario games! Doesn’t seem like he knows about them. What would he think? Like that, her anger seemed to fade._ She opened the case and took the disc out.

“I heard you,” I reminded her.

“Darn it,” she said. “But I guess I would’ve had to tell you sooner or later.” She gestured toward the living room. “Let’s go back in there.”

I shut the door behind me. “How are you feeling? You seem a whole lot better now.”

Now Sam hesitated. Her frown dropped.

“Oh, th-that headache,” she stammered. “It went away as soon as the telepathy started.”

“That’s great!” I said.

I could’ve sworn I saw her mouth twitch.

A thought of her’s echoed in my mind. _Even after that stupid argument, he’s checking on me? That’s nice of him._

I smiled at that.

Like that, by watching me, that warmth of hers faded from her face. The scowl came back.

“Let’s get this over with.” She spun away from me. “Please stay out of my head.”

If only I could.

 

Turns out that there was this device that’s kinda like a DVD player sitting on Sam’s TV. I’m not sure how I could’ve missed it the first time around, ‘cause there was a glowing red light by the power button.

As Sam switched the thing on, I read the brand name off of it. “Wii U?” That’s a strange name. Like, We You? Why not Me You, You We, or We Me? Me You We? I dunno.

The light flashed blue.

She put the disc into the box, but the TV didn’t change. She got the remote and fiddled around with the settings.

The main menu, I found out, was a bunch of virtual people walking around on the screen.

Now what?

I glanced around.

Huh? There was a glowing black box on the table. How did I not see that either?

I picked it up.

Sam nodded.

We sat down on the couch.

I saw that one of the icons on screen was my face. The cursor was over to it.

She leaned over me and tapped on the icon.

We waited, and-

“Super Mario 3D World!”

My voice! It’d been doubled on the TV and tablet too!

Several people showed up on the TV and tablet. I instantly recognized them.

The people there were Peach, Luigi, Toad, and me.

Everyone donned cat suits at some point during the cutscene. They fought a goomba or two. After a minute, they ran off.

Okay, what is this?!

The last time the four of us went on an adventure together, it involved cat suits. There were these Sprixie princesses and Bowser built an amusement park for some reason.

Sam held this strange, skinny white thing out to me. “Here.”

I took it from her. “What’s this?”

“A Wii Remote. If you’re playing, you’re using use that.”

“And I guess you’re playing with that?” I asked as she took the black box from me.

“It’s easier for me,” she said, clicking into the game.

I saw how the cursor on screen hovered over the middle box, which read “Empty”.

“So I guess you’ll be you and I’ll be Luigi?” Sam asked.

“Huh?” Now we were selecting characters. My cursor was over a portrait of me while Sam’s was hovering one of my bro’s. “Oh. Sure.”

The both of us confirmed our choices. Then, the game started.

* * *

_Sam_

I would hate to admit it, but Mario is a fast learner. He started beating me in nearly everything we played. It didn’t even matter if we had to work together like in _3D World_. He would always reach the flagpole way before I did, sometimes forcing whoever I picked to bubble up as he rushed through the levels.

In _Smash_ 4, he beat me to a pulp while playing as himself and later chose Luigi to do it all over again. I barely managed to win a Sudden Death here since I spammed Dark Pit’s electroshock cannon a dozen times until I hit him.

After that, I almost went mad when we tried _Mario Party_. That sucked. And it didn’t help that CPU Peach joined us in both games played. Nobody likes her in those games. ESPECIALLY when she seems to TARGET me all the TIME.

The one game I managed to beat Mario in was _Mario Kart 8_ during some 200cc races. Even then, he always came in at a close second. Somehow still I lucked out and managed to drag him down with me whenever a blue shell came.

Mario remained cheery even when he was on the losing side. He’d sometimes pipe up with a comment or two, and I learned some interesting tidbits that way. For example, there had only ever been one Kart event in the Mushroom Kingdom. The rest of the series had never happened.

I got to ask him a few questions as we played like, “Does your brother have a ghost dog for a pet?”

He often responded, grinning, with things like, “Yep! He calls him Polter.”

He burst out laughing when I told him how unoriginal that name was.

The whole thing was like those interviews Nintendo sometimes held with Mario’s voice actor, except you know, one of the actual characters he played was around to answer them. I found it to be fun-

What the hell am I saying? Am I enjoying being around this guy? _Don’t get carried away, Sam. All he’s done is cause trouble for you._

I’m grateful that Mario wasn’t calling me a “princess” like in certain interviews I’ve seen. I’d be throwing him over the couch if he did.

Somehow he didn’t catch my last thought as he finished in second place yet again.

The clock under the TV read 12:30.

I figured we had done enough after some five hours of gaming and stood up to stretch.

“These were pretty good,” Mario said.

“You were expecting a Nintendo game to be terrible?” I asked. “They’re pretty consistent when it comes to quality.”

“Most of the things that the council back home doesn’t approve of suck.”

I crossed my arms. _Uh, duh?_

“Yeah, that’s a given. Sorry.”

“The Mushroom Kingdom has a council?” I asked. “Does Princess Peach not have control over everything?”

“No, that’s not what I meant. Princess Peach does do council meetings…”

_Please don’t stray off-topic like you always seem to do._

He mercifully got back to the point. “Any products related to me hav’ta go through some judges. It’s part of a company an old friend and I set up a while back.

“Okay.” Wasn’t there something like that in one the Mario vs. Donkey Kong games? Never played those.

“You’re asking me,” he said, shrugging.

“When I am not asking at all,” I mumbled under my breath as I shut down the system.

He surprisingly didn’t catch that. What if I were to speak to myself more often?

 

Since lunch had come around, I relocated to the kitchen while Mario went upstairs to do his end of our deal. I promised to pay him with some hash browns since he had that vendetta against spaghetti with marinara.

After throwing the hash browns into the toaster oven, there was a small “rawr” behind me.

Tabitha marched into the kitchen.

“You’re hungry too?” I asked her.

Her food bag was thankfully on the lower cabinet shelf. I scooped it up and refilled her bowl.

She didn’t move as I put the bowl back on the floor.

I waited.

Our staring contest went on for a few moments. She didn’t seem willing to move at all.

That’s when I realized she wanted water. I picked up the other bowl.

It was after I put it back down that she stuck her head into the food bowl.

_Darn cat._ I pulled my phone out of my pocket. It worked pretty well for being an older model, so I never felt like I had to upgrade it.

I set Mario’s food to cook for twenty minutes using the phone’s alarm app. After that, I focused on scraping out the leftover spaghetti from its container.

A loud crash made me drop the fork I was using.

The hairs on Tabitha’s back arched.

_“What was that?”_ I thought.

“Accidentally threw the mallet down a flight,” Mario called from upstairs. “Sorry ‘bout that!”

I went back to my work, deciding to give him a pass. I threw the rest of the pasta on to the plate, poured on the marinara, got it all into the microwave, and inputted the numbers into it.

Another crash.

I yelled in my head, _"What now?"_

No response. Did he not hear me this time?

_“Mar?”_

A third noise, this time much louder than the others.

“Geez, Sam,” I heard him respond. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

_“What are you doing?”_

“My end of the bargain. Didn’t I tell you about the mallet?”

Okay, now I remembered. _“Are the loud noises necessary? You’re scaring Tabitha.”_ I watched as she crouched under the kitchen table.

“Loud’s the way I go!” he yelled back.

As the time flew by, that was what we had to put up with. It occurred to me to wonder again how he could do his job with a huge sledgehammer, mallet, or whatever he wanted to call it. I, however, decided not to ask. I was happy as long as it worked.

The microwave beeped.

Tabitha remerged from underneath the table as I ate. She made her way back over to her dishes, drank her water, and promptly ran off to somewhere else in the house.

At 12:55, I was almost finished with my meal when my phone’s timer went off. The hash browns seemed good enough to me, so I carried them over to the table.

_“Hey,”_ I said, _“your food’s ready.”_

The wooden floorboards outside of the kitchen creaked. His voice was a lot closer this time and I heard, “Great timing. I’m done with everything upstairs.”

It was this that made me breeze past him, barely registering his wide-eyed expression, and fly up the steps to my room.

Lo and behold, there was my door perfectly set back into its hinges.

I slowly opened it and shut it closed. “It works! How did you do it?”

“I’ve got my secrets,” I heard him say as he ran to my side. “All you know is that involved the mallet.” Wow, he was quick. He even had the hash browns with him. “Satisfied?”

“Yep,” I said. “I have my room back.”

“Can I ask why you were so obsessed over that?”

“What?”

“Your door and your privacy. You never stop blabbing about it.”

I stepped into my room.

Mario rubbed the back of his neck. “Or is that inappropriate to ask?”

I sighed. “Look, when you’ve been treated like shit your entire life, you need a safe place to hide from it all.”

I walked into my room and locked myself inside, leaving him alone on the steps.

 

A loud knock startled me back awake.

“Sam, are you there?” came a gruff voice.

I rubbed the sleep from my face as I sat up. My hand instinctively went for my phone to check the time. It was two o’clock in the afternoon.

“Sam?”

With a groan, I got up and wandered over to my bedroom door. I called through it, “Dad?”

“Yes. Now open up.”

_Oh goodie._ I unlocked my door.

Father was at the top of my steps.

Mario was there too, awkwardly hanging out behind him. He waved at me.

_“What’re you doing here?”_ I asked Mario.

“He’s been upset since he came back,” he said.

_“Upset?”_ Oh boy, here we go.

“You’re home early,” I remarked to Father. _Again._

“If you’re smugly standing there,” he said, “do you already know that you’re guilty?”

“Smug?” Since when was I ever smug? Angry, sure, with what’s been going on, but smug? I decided to ask about the second thing instead. “I’m “guilty”?”

“School called me. You skipped out.”

“That wasn’t all my fault!”

“You’re grounded.”

What?

_What?_

Was he grounding me because I “skipped out”? Since when in hell was that a thing? This is my first time not going in a long while, but come on.

In the midst of my confusion, I asked, “Don’t you notice that I’ve had the door fixed?”

“I know,” Father said. “Good job. You’re still grounded.”

After uttering that, he left the room, brushing by Mario. He didn’t seem to notice the plumber as the door closed behind him.

Mario ran a hand through his hair, having taken his gloves, and more notably, his hat, off. Why not his shoes, I had no idea.

But oh great. He was getting comfortable.

I buried my face back into my pillow. 


	5. Day Three - Part One

_Mario_

_“Look, when you’ve been treated like shit your entire life, you need a safe place to hide from it all.”_

What had happened for her to think like that? I guess I’m asking another time ‘cause I’ve become uncomfortable with how I can read Sam’s mind. After we went our separate ways last night, she kept thinking about taking a stack of papers and hitting an older dude over the head with them. Oh, and there was a thing about a cow. Or _I’m pretty sure_ there was a cow.

Don’t ask what that means. I have no idea and I don’t wanna find out. My point is, I’m preeeeetty sure I’m not meant to in her head like this. It’s completely different from when I was exploring Luigi’s dreams or using Cappy to possess people.

I’m also going to admit that I wasn’t all that comfortable sleeping on Sam’s couch. It wasn’t like home, where at night my little bro would be snoring away in his bed a step away from mine, the curtains would be shut tight, and I’d hear the crickets. I really miss that.

Well, I survived the night. And with all that ranting about Sam’s thoughts, I couldn’t even hear them now. Was she still asleep?

Guess that meant I could have some time to myself before she got up.

My stomach rumbled as I was reaching for the TV remote.

I pulled back from it and muttered to myself, “Maybe I’ll eat first.”

 

Remember how I said there’s not much food in the house? I had to dig deep for breakfast today. The refrigerator and freezer were empty(ish. The food in there didn’t interest me), so I had to hop on top of that pretty tall kitchen counter to get to the shelves.

Feats like that, ladies and gentlemen, are why they call me Jumpman.

If you’re wondering what I was making, it was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. There was no way I could mess up slathering a piece of bread with jelly.

I had smushed the sandwich together when I heard a yawn outside the room.

“Sam?” I called.

Uh, no. That wasn’t Sam. The tall guy standing in front of me was her dad.

I nervously laughed slowly slid the sandwich away from me. _Whoops._

There was a phone pressed against Sam’s dad’s ear. He was speaking into it. “I gotcha. I’ll have my part of the presentation done by Sunday.”

As I sat there, I realized I didn’t have my hat or my gloves on. I’d also taken off my shoes a while ago.

What if he kicked me out of his house once he saw me?

Sam’s dad chuckled. “Yeah, can’t help you out with her there. I’m not an expert on aliens.”

My stomach rumbled again. It wasn’t gonna wait for this conversation to end, huh?

But, _aliens?_ Now I wondered what the guy’s job was. An astronaut? That’s a good question to ask Sam later.

I reached for my plate. Maybe I sneak by him?

The plate slid against the counter.

Sam’s dad stared straight up at me.

I pulled my hand away. _Nuts._ It was time for Plan B.

I grinned at him and shuffled away from the sandwich.

He kept watching the counter.

I was tempted to grab my food and run. I nearly did when Sam’s dad walked over.

“Hi?” I said.

He didn’t talk back. He picked up the sandwich.

_Ew, no!_ “Germs are a thing, ya know. That’s mine.”

“Let me guess,” he said, “she’s trying to butter me up?”

“Well, there _is_ peanut butter in there.”

He shrugged. “Eh, I’ll take it. I’m still grounding her.”

I watched, _horrified,_ as the dish I had put the sandwich on was taken. “Hey! That’s also mine!”

I poked him.

Sam’s dad didn’t seem to notice me as he walked off with my things. He pressed his phone against his ear and said, “Yeah. Sammy’s been trying to worm her way out of doing a bunch of late homework assignments.” A pause. Then, “Oh, I’m not taking the bait. I finally saw her grades the other day. She’s failing most of her classes.”

“Huh?” Should I be confused by him calling Sam ‘Sammy’ or by the other thing? The part where he said that she was failing in school?

Hold up.

“This, coupled with how she skipped out yesterday, makes me wonder if she’ll be held back or, worse, drop out of high school. You have no clue how _devastated_ I’d be if that happened. I mean, remember what I told you about Violette?”

I slid off the counter and rushed out of the kitchen.

Sam’s dad still didn’t see or hear me. Guess that was a thing to wonder about later, ‘cause I had stuff way more important to take of.

I had to save Sam’s report card.

 

“Hey, what’re ya doing in there?” I yelled, pounding on Sam’s bedroom door.

Nothing.

“Yello?”

Still quiet.

“If you don’t open up, I’m breaking in.”

The door flew open. Sam was there in front of me, wearing a long blue shirt and loose-fitting pajama pants. “Don’t. You. _Dare_.”

I crossed my arms.

Her hair was tangled up behind her ears like a bird’s nest. There were dark circles under her eyes and she clutched a pencil in her left hand. “I’m not in a good mood. Dad snuck in last night and kidnapped my phone.”

“That’s a good thing,” I said, “‘cause we gotta talk.”

“About what? Saving my phone?” _He does have a track record for that._

“Talk first, phone later.”

“No.” Sam moved to shut the door closed.

I thrust my hand out and caught it mid-shut.

She gasped. Her tired eyes flew open.

I pushed the door wide open. “I heard your dad say that you’ll flop out of school if you keep messing up. Is that true?”

“Um.”

“That’s why I’m here.” I stepped into her bedroom. “You’re not failing as long as I’m around. Ya know why?” I jabbed a finger at myself. “‘Cause you’re talking to Mr. Dropout right now. I could’ve been a lawyer.” Not that I ever wanted to be one. I was giving her an example.

If she didn’t look confused, I bet she’d be asking how the “great and powerful” Mario, as she’s called me, failed out. It couldn’t have been because of a bad cube drawing in an art class.

_Note to self: never mention that. I’d get laughed at._

“Why don’t we get started?” I said, closing the door behind me.

 

A few minutes later, we were sitting together at Sam’s desk.

Sam studied a blank piece of paper in front of her.

Meanwhile, I was sitting on the desk. I flipped through a big textbook in my lap. “What’re we doing?”

“An essay,” Sam said.

I remember having plenty of essays I had to do myself back in school. So this shouldn’t be that big of a deal. “What’s it on?”

“Greek _arête_.”

“Huh?”

“Greece.”

I put the book down in my lap. “‘Grease’?”

“It’s a country here.”

“Is it based on fried food?” That sounded like my sorta place!

“No,” she said, shattering my dreams.

I flipped over a page. “Oh well. At least there’s Luncheon.” I scanned the text.

Ugh, it was _boring_. I never liked history. It’s basically war after war after this invention being invented after war after this dude dying on this date after-

Oh, what the heck.

“What’s _arête_?” I asked.

How would you pronounce that? Ar-re-ta? Ar-ay-tay? Ar-e-tea? I should’ve paid attention to how she said it the first time ‘cause I said that first one.

“Read the book,” Sam sighed.

I shut the textbook closed. “I wanna see if you know what you’re doing first. Explain to me what it is.”

There was a bulge in her neck for a second before I heard, “ _A_ _rête_ ’s this, um, old Greek code of honor where a man must live up his potential and display moral virtue. Those who followed this code put their city before themselves and their families...”

 

_The Bros knew their perfect midsummer day was about to be ruined when a wounded elderly toad stumbled on to their property._

_At first, all Luigi could do was gape at him in horror. The garden shears he had used on his rose bushes slipped from his hands as he followed the red trail that spottily dotted the path behind the pitiful man._

_It was there that the toad with a brown-spotted mushroom cap fell face forward, groaning weakly. He trembled violently upon the dirt path._

_Unable to watch any longer, Luigi shouted for, “Mario!”_

 

_“Big Bro!” Luigi said. “Wait!”_

_He stopped at the door. “Yeah?”_

_“D-don’t go. Didn’t you see what happened to Toadsworth?”_

_“Weegee,” he retorted, “the princess is in the castle. We can’t abandon her!”_

_Luigi went silent._

_Dark storm clouds were rolling in high above their heads. The temperature dropped rapidly, leaving both of them shivering in front of their house._

_Another building within Toad Town exploded as one of the invader’s large bluish beasts, a wyvern, rampaged across the town._

_The brothers jumped from its suddenness._

_Luigi screeched._

_“And there’s that,” the elder of the two bros said. “People are gonna be put in danger if I let things like that destroy their homes!”_

_“Mario, no!”_

_“I’m going,” Mario said. “Stay inside and take care of the old toad.”_

_“Mari-”_

_He didn’t stick around to hear the second uttering of his name. He opted to rush towards the town._

_The first heavy flakes of white snow fell around him._

 

_Red._

_He saw red everywhere. Not only from the red of the carpet beneath him but his own._

_He felt an intense throbbing from below his chest. Was it his abdomen where the red came from?_

_There were screams._

_The first voice, he knew, belonged to a toad. He yelled, “Run! You gotta run!”_

_The second voice was a woman’s. Her shrill, terrified tone rang in his ears._

_Princess! he thought._

_Peach was still here. Why was she still here?!_

_His eyes flew around. All he could see were the bright red carpet and a white wall across the room._

_As his gaze swept back to his chest, he happened upon his hat. Its brim laid inches from his face._

_The red “M” at the front, surrounded by a bright white color, burned into his vision. He focused on it as his consciousness flickered in and out._

_“Wow,” he heard a voice whisper to him. “I didn’t expect a fight with the great and powerful Mario to be over that soon.”_

_He wanted to offer up a rebuttal; to shove those words down the owner of the voice’s throat. He wanted to stand up and fight them. He needed to help the princess._

_Unfortunately, the searing pain stopped him. He couldn’t move, barely could keep on breathing, and his vision was fading. That left his ears as the only things that were still working._

_“So would you like to die next, “princess”?” the same voice, louder now, tauntingly asked._

_There was no noise for the next few seconds. Was his hearing fading as quickly as his eyesight did? What if he died before knowing if Peach was safe?_

_The sound of heels pounding the stone beneath them filled his ears. Peach was fleeing the scene._

_His last breath, a relieved sigh, escaped him. Hopefully, she could escape on her own. Maybe Luigi can take Peach in. They can fight her together._

_In the meantime, the Mushroom Kingdom had a new monarch. Her victorious laughter filled the air as Peach’s footsteps faded away._

_A shoe landed on him. It pressed tightly against his skin._

_He quivered._

_The new monarch spoke again to him. “Hope you have a nice time in the afterlife. Tell your precious Jaydees I said hi.” The foot was removed from his stomach. “Well, if she ever did exist.”_

_All there was left was silence, and even it faded as his life left his limbs._

 

A finger snap brought me back around.

“Mar?” Sam asked. She was sitting in front of me. “Are you okay?”

I sat up. What was _that_ all about? It had all felt real! Like, too real!

My hand went for my chest, where that pain had been. There wasn’t any blood, thankfully. What had happened there?

_Were those memories?_ I asked myself. _Was that what happened back home?_

Did I die? How-

Wait, should I be _dead_?! Was that why Sam’s dad hadn’t noticed me? What was going on?

I pinched my arm. “Ow.” So one thing I could do was injure myself.

“What are you doing?” Sam asked.

“Do I look alive?” I asked, latching on to her arms. “Be honest with me.”

“Ye-yes?” she said. She sank away from my grip.

Her thoughts rang out as, _“I don’t know! What do you mean?”_

“I remembered a few things from that gap, Sam! Toadsworth was wounded there were these monsters attacking Toad I was bleeding!”

She drew further away from me. “What?”

“Toadsworth was wounded!” I said again. “Something terrible happened back home!”

“You’re remembering things now?”

I groaned.

She broke free from my grip and threw her arms up. She shouted mentally, _“You’re the one shouting in my ear! It hurts!”_ One of her hands landed on my shoulder. “Take deep breaths. They’ll help you relax.” I noted how firm she sounded. “Okay?”

“O-okay,” I muttered. I swallowed as much air as I could, and slowly released it. After a few breaths, my heart rate slowed down.

Sam removed her hand from me. She rolled the pencil in her palm around.

After a full minute (Which I may or may not have counted in my head), I heard her ask, “Toadsworth was hurt? By what? Monsters?”

I shook my head. I had no idea how he had gotten hurt. “How’a ‘bout I start from the beginning?”

 

By the end of my story, Sam was studying what used to be her essay paper. “You’re saying that you _died_ in battle?” _If that’s true, is that why Father hasn’t noticed him? Is he a_ ghost _?_

“Exactly what I was wondering,” I said. Sam’s dad should’ve seen my “unstealth” (I guess I’ll call it that?) back in the kitchen.

“How could you be dead? You’re a seasoned adventurer. You know to have a bunch of one-ups.”

“Luigi usually carries them,” I reminded her. “I tend to do the fighting while he supports me from the back.”

“He wasn’t there in your last flashback.”

“...Yep.”

“Where’s your hat, by the way?”

“Downstairs.”

“Okay, whatever. But if you _are_ dead, somehow I can see you. I’m assuming that stupid thing of yours is responsible for it.” _Could it be that Mar’s spirit was in the hat before it hit me? How’d it even end up there?_

“Who knows?” There she goes calling me Mar again. Was “Mario” hard for her to say? She even keeps mispronouncing my name. It’s MA-rio, not MAR-io. And I’m tired of people back home making jokes outta calling me MARY-o.

Enough of me ranting. What was important was that I _had_ to get home. I _had to_ see Luigi, Peach, and the others again.

Tonight I was gonna start looking for a way back to the Mushroom Kingdom.


	6. Day Three/Four - Part Two

_Sam_

“We’re blowing off my extremely late essay after you said that I should stay in school?”

Once a failure, always a failure, I guess. Mario had forgotten all about my homework as he shoved PB&J sandwich after PB&J sandwich into my bookbag. Having his breakfast stolen by Father must have peeved him off.

Not that I cared or anything. He could waste all the bread in my house. Maybe that would force Father to get new stuff for us to eat.

As Mario slathered his twenty-fourth sandwich together he said, “It’s Saturday night. If we don’t find anything, we can work on it tomorrow.”

I had spent most of the day in my room after our talk about Mario possibly being, uh, dead. Father had gotten mad at me when I tried leaving it to do stuff.

Why couldn’t we have gotten a house with more than one bathroom?

My stomach rumbled as I spotted Father’s opened pretzel bag on top of the microwave.

Mario glanced back at me. “You haven’t had much to eat today, right?”

I nodded.

“There’s stuff up here aside from the sandwiches. Your dad went shopping while you were catching up on sleep.”

“He did?” Again? That would be a first.

Mario gestured to the cabinets. “Why don’t you come up here?”

Unfortunately, there was a roadblock to that. “Uh, I’m short.”

“Me too,” he said. “I’m up here despite being shorter than you. Lift yourself up.”

“No way. That’s undignified.”

“How?”

“You aren’t supposed to climb on that.”

“Unless you’re short,” he added. “You’ve noticed that you are.”

Okay, he had a point. I still didn’t want to do it.

“Use a chair.”

“That’s still undignified.”

He dropped his butter knife. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you’re being weird.”

Mario’s oversized hand swiftly came down and latched on to my arm. His grip, I found, was rather tight.

Feeling him uncomfortably squeeze my arm bones, I tried shaking him off. “Hey! Let go!”

It wasn’t any use. He had an iron grip on me. And seeing as I couldn’t escape, he effortlessly lifted me up.

I nearly cried out as my bare feet dangled an inch off the floor. I stretched my toes out and desperately swung them. Could I at least scrape against the floor again?

Mario giggled.

I glared at him.

He stopped laughing and pulled me up the rest of the way. Once he had firmly set me down beneath the shelves, he said, “See? That was easy.” He promptly let go of me and finished making his next sandwich.

I trembled as I bent and unbent my throbbing arm. “Ow?”

“You’re fine, Sam,” he reassured me.

He was right. Miraculously, none of my bones had been broken.

Mario grabbed the other cabinet’s knob and pulled on it.

I gasped. My arm’s pain faded away as I leaned towards the shelves.

The inside of that cabinet had been transformed into a paradise. Behind its shutter were a variety of snacks, ranging from double chocolate chip cookies to peanut butter and cheese crackers to several different potato chip brands. Father had even bought lunch and dinner type foods like macaroni and cheese and mashed potatoes.

My hand reached for a can of pasta and marinara sauce.

Mario finished making his next sandwich as he said, “Are you gonna eat anything?”

I held up the can.

He crossed his arms. The knife he had been using stuck out of his left hand. “Marinara again?”

I lifted my palm up in a shrug. “I’m not sure. There’s a lot in here.”

“You wanna bring a hot bowl of that with you? Why not the crackers instead?”

“Huh?”

“I’m going,” he said. He zippered up my bag. “You won’t have time to eat that unless you want it uncooked.”

“Fine,” I grumbled. So much for a good, hot meal.

I shoved the can back where it had sat by one of the chip brands and grabbed a pack of peanut butter and cheese crackers. I tossed it into my bag, where it was swallowed by two dozen sandwiches.

 

I pulled open my front door and glanced around.

Things were quiet on my block. Every single house here had their lights off. The snow previously on the street and sidewalks had been cleared away, leaving behind the large piles of white on everyone’s yards.

I attempted to zipper up my puffy winter coat. It had this stupid habit of not going through the link at the bottom. It didn’t matter much when I was racing to catch the bus, but tonight was different.

Mario walked out of the house wearing a small teal jacket. Well, to be honest, it would be small if his drastically different proportions didn’t make it pool around his feet.

I couldn’t help snickering at him.

“Again,” he groaned, “not funny.”

“You’re the one who didn’t want my old jacket,” I reminded him. This time, I got lucky and my jacket’s zipper clicked into the link. I pulled it up.

“Excuse me if I didn’t wanna wear a purple thing with a horse face for a hood,” he said. He fixed his hat so that it faced forward.

“Excuse me if Twilight Sparkle was my favorite pony when I was twelve,” I said, patting my pocket. My keys jingled around within it.

I giggled at the image of the small mustachioed man dressed as a unicorn as I shut the front door closed. Before we raided my closets and found Father’s old piece of trash, Twilight Sparkle was the only coat I had aside from my own. I specifically remember how the big horn, which had lost its puffiness from years of going through the wash, had flopped between Mario’s eyes.

“Oh, quit that!” he yelled.

I tried the door as I continued snickering. Finding it locked, I said, “Are you kidding, Mar? That’s the best thing I’ve seen in a while.”

His face became a shade of bright red in the porchlight. Red as his hat, even.

“Was it the purple that put you off? I get it; not everyone’s a fan of Waluigi. Maybe we should get you a jacket based on Applejack?”

“Stop,” he said.

“Just saying.” I put on my bag and stretched. “The woods aren’t too far from here. We should start searching there first.”

Towering over us many streets ahead was a giant hill. Countless bare trees dotted its landscape, and centered at its very top was an American flag that waved wildly in a harsh breeze.

That was what I knew was there. It was too dark for anyone to see it right now.

There was rustling behind me. I glanced back at Mario.

He took a PB&J sandwich out of my bag. He didn’t bother to close it up as he started nibbling away at his food.

I zipped it shut. “Mar?”

He glanced up at me and swallowed.

“Didn’t you hear me?”

He lowered the sandwich from his mouth. “What?”

“Do you want to explore the woods?” I gestured with my head in its general direction. “It’ll take a while to get there and back since we’ll be going through town, but it’s a great start.”

“Let’sa go,” he said, nodding.

 

I have a confession to make: I haven’t been through Havenland as often as native to the town should be. When I come out here, it’s usually to eat at the twenty-four-seven diner with my allowance and go straight back home.

I knew the town’s layout by heart despite this. All the homes were located in the “outer ring” of the town while most of the businesses were in the “inner”. The innermost part was the park and city hall, which was an open field aside from the playground all the way in the back.

If I were a government official, I would want to keep the children away from me too. I never liked kids since most are hyper little brats who cry a lot. So I was feeling grateful that we’d had come out here late at night. That meant my ears wouldn’t bleed from their whining.

While I’m ranting, I’d like to mention that I’m not as athletic as Mar. We weren’t even halfway to the woods yet and I was tired. I’m willing to bet thar he could’ve run to the woods and back by now if he had gone on alone.

As I sat at a picnic table, Mario was busy finishing the last of his sandwich stash. Once a wrapper was dealt with, he threw the foil that had encased it into a nearby garbage can.

I watched the stars above from where I was. Being such a small town in the middle of nowhere allowed Havenland to have a great view of them.

Mario finally finished his food. As he came back to the table, he looked up and remarked, “Wow, it’s different here,”

“Of course.” _Duh._

He smiled regardless and sat down.

Now the two of us watched the dark sky that was littered with a rainbow of dots. The stars twinkled and pulsed at steady rates like heartbeats. A plane came loudly trailing across the sky but failed to ruin the moment for me. I found that I didn’t care at all.

I folded my arms over the table in front of me and felt myself relax after what seemed like an eternity sitting there. The cold winter night air bit through my coat and into my skin.

One thing was different about tonight. I couldn’t place what it was.

Was it because I was out of the house, where it was warm all the time? Or that I was completely disobeying my dad, forgetting all about my homework, and going on an adventure? Maybe Mario and his telepathic link with me was changing my mood. Did our thing go both ways?

Or was this because I was caught up in the moment?

Right here under the stars, I could care less.

My eyes found Mario’s big blue ones. And we stared at each other.

Like that, it clicked. I knew what was up.

No, get your minds out of the gutter. I’m not falling for the red-capped dinglehead. He’s six years older than me. Why would I want a guy that old? And, if we remember right, he might be dead.

Eugh.

My problem was that the stars were reminding me of things. Things that were better off not said but came up anyway.

 

_You see, there were plenty of reasons why my dad and I moved here all those years back. One of them was that Father had had dreams of being an astronomer since he was a kid. The stars always appealed to him but living in New York, where there was tons of light pollution, got in the way of that. Not to mention that it was the Big Apple. The overcrowding there was ridiculous._

_Father went to college to study astronomy after I was born. His father had his own truck driving business and his wife’s parents a supermarket. I was in good hands financially._

_Emotionally, not so much. Father couldn’t stand the people he lived with. I was the only one he actually cared about._

_As for why he didn’t like our family, the reason primarily laid with my mom’s dad. He wasn’t what you could call the greatest person. He-_

 

_No. Stop thinking about that bastard._

Mario and I glanced at each other again.

“Did you catch any of that?” What if he had? What if he asked about what he saw?

I braced myself for an onslaught of questions.

That never came. What he asked was, “Any of what? Aside from the “b” word?”

I got up. “Good.” Those memories, in particular, were meant to stay buried. “We should get a move on. I’m not sure how long we’ve been here-”

“Half an hour.”

“How would you know that?”

He grinned and said, “I might’ve found this hiding in a couch pillow today.”

Mario held up a phone. My phone.

“Huh?” I snatched it from him.

The lock screen shone brightly upon my tired eyes. I snapped them closed as my thumb scouted for the brightness setting scale.

I sensed that the intensity of light had been lowered and reopened my eyes. A message underneath the time 1:00 am read, “Failed password attempts: 2”.

“Don’t tell me you tried breaking into it.”

He lifted both of his gloves. “Neither attempt was mine, I swear.”

“Yeah?” I said. How could I be so sure?

Mario rose to his feet. “Let’s keep going. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a way home tonight.” After a moment, he added, “My home. Sorry.”

“Whatever.”

As the both of us walked out of the park, I couldn’t help but give one last fleeting glance to the stars.

A fleeting thought joined it, and this time I voiced it out loud for the world to hear. “Hey, Mar?”

“Yeah, Sam?” I heard him say.

“Suppose we did find a way back to your world tonight. Should I tell my dad anything? You know, that I’m off on a crazy adventure before we leave?

“Would he believe me?”

* * *

_Mario_

Sam said a thing. Or thought a thing. It was one of those.

Whatever it had been, I hadn't heard it clearly enough. I perked up from my last sandwich and asked, “What?”

“There’s a convenience store here,” she said. “Do you know what those are?”

“Of course I know!” I said. “I visited a few back in the Metro Kingdom.”

“Random,” she said, rolling her eyes, “but okay.”

The brightly-lit store across from us was a blinding white color. The parking lot around it was empty.

“Are we stopping again?” I asked.

How long had it been since we left the park? Ten minutes? Fifteen? If only Sam hadn’t taken her phone back, I could tell. Or maybe if I had ever invested in a watch...

“No,” Sam said. “Why would we?”

“Food, maybe?”

“Shouldn’t you digest those twelve sandwiches of yours first?”

Maybe my next excuse would work? “What’a ‘bout we get drinks? I should wash them down.”

“We’re good. I’ve got an extra bottle of water.”

Okay, so I couldn’t convince her. What if I were to…?

I stepped off the sidewalk.

Sam had been making her way over to a walk signal when she saw me there.

“I told you that we’re not going,” she said. “We’re fine-”

“Last one there’s a rotten egg!” I shouted, bolting across the street.

Sam cursed at me. It’s best that I don’t mention what she said.

She agreed to work with me. I thought, smiling.

I turned around to watch her.

She was gonna hav’ta get used to having little adventures if we’re sticking together. That’s the kinda guy I am.

I mean, who wouldn’t wanna have fun every once in a while?

 

“What’s a kid like you doin’ out ‘ere?”

Sam tossed two packets of double chocolate chip brownies on to the counter. “There’s a late-night party down the street,” she lied. “I’m getting snacks.”

The cashier nodded. “Ah, I see.” He typed into his cash register. “Is this all you’re buyin’?”

“For me, yes.”

While she was busy, I wandered the aisles with my hood on and my hands in my sleeves. Not hard with how I was wearing Sam’s dad’s big, zipped-up coat.

“Make sure that you’re completely covered while we’re in there,” Sam had told me. “People will freak out if they see a hooded figure moving around without a face.”

I studied the brands I found in the aisles.

Huntersfield Vanilla Cookies? No.

 _Apple pie?_ Eh, not today.

 _An eggplant?_ Ew. Reminds me of Waluigi. And I’d like to not be thinking about him or Wario right now!

I can tolerate them, but they can be gross. It’s ‘cause of Wario that I’ve vowed to never eat anything garlicky again.

I continued on with my search.

 _Goat butter?_ No thanks.

That last item was in the dairy aisle. What was I doing there?

I circled back to the snacks.

“Did you find anything yet?” Sam asked me.

“No,” I called.

“Who’s that?” the cashier asked. “Your little brother?”

I spun around. “I’m not related to her at all. You- Um.”

The cashier and Sam exchanged looks.

I giggled as I went back to looking at the food. I could’ve given that cashier a heart attack!

“He’s touchy about his age,” Sam said. “He’s actually older than me.”

“How old?” the cashier asked.

“Um, around twenty?”

Wasn’t Sam going to elaborate on that?

A second of silence passed. I guess not.

I couldn’t stop myself from spinning back around. I shouted at them, “FOUR!”

Sam’s hands went up as she shouted, “Whoa! No need to get angry, Mar-”

I threw a carton of fish-shaped crackers at her.

 

The next thing I knew, we were trudging through the snow to the woods’ edge.

“Ow,” Sam hissed as she rubbed her hand. “Why did you get violent? That cashier was ready to call the cops.”

“Sorry,” I muttered. “I shouldn’t have been so annoyed by you getting my age “wrong”. That’d been pretty stupid on my part.”

She snorted. “I don’t need an apology. I’m only asking you to tone it down.” She pulled out her phone.

Five seconds later, a small light lit the path ahead of us.

“Can I apologize for apologizing?” I asked.

Sam stepped into the snow.

So far, there was nothing unusual. All there was to see were trees and snow.

“Stop saying sorry,” Sam said. “It makes no sense.”

“How?”

“Sorries are for those trying to excuse themselves for being stupid. I believe that after you do something, it’s done, and that’s that. It’s up to other people if they take offense to your actions or not.”

“Oh.” I grabbed a tree trunk to steady myself with.

Now we were heading up a steep hill. As Sam and I climbed it, we had to grab at various tree branches and whatever else there was to hold on to, like rocks.

Since we weren’t having much trouble with it, I allowed myself to think about what she had said.

Sam had an interesting philosophy to subscribe to, but what if you felt remorse for what you did? I mean, sure: actions can speak louder than words, but words are easy to communicate. You could promise to make a change.

I told her that.

“Words have no meaning without anything to back them up,” she replied back. “Actions show that you car-”

Without warning, the white under Sam’s feet gave way. A pit swallowed her up, and I heard her yell-

It stopped. The snow had eaten her past her waistline.

“That you care?” I finished her sentence and cracked a smile. If that had been me there, I might’ve been completely buried!

Her eyes narrowed as she noticed my expression. She said, “Wor-words won’t get me out of this stupid pit.” She shivered from the cold around her.

“Yeah, guess you’ve got a point.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her up.

She hugged herself as she sat on the snow.

“Let’sa be careful to avoid that next time,” I said.

Sam nodded. “Ye-yeah.”

We had to find something to help us climb if the snow was gonna be this fragile. Something, like sticks.

Which is what I thought when I spotted a pile popping out of the snow around a small tree. I scrambled over to pick up a pair. “How’a ‘bout we use these for now on?”

 

We searched the base of the mountain for anything suspicious. I overturned rocks and searched between and behind trees. Mainly ‘cause that was all there was here.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Sam asked me multiple times.

Eventually, I told her, “Nope. Not at all!”

 

“Consider this payback for the cheese cracker box,” Sam said, poking me with her stick.

I ignored her and kept walking.

 

I climbed on to a tree that formed a bridge between a gap in the hill. I threw my arms out to keep my balance.

“That does NOT look okay, Mario!” Sam yelled after me.

“Oh, calm down,” I said. “I’m only twenty feet off the ground.”

“What if you fall?”

“You’re forgetting that I’m probably dead.”

 

“Is that a hole in the ground? In a cave?”

“This might be it!” I cried, rushing forward. “This might be our way back!” It seemed suspicious enough. There was even a small flower patch growing at the bottom of the hole. How did they thrive with no light coming through here?

“...I’m not so sure if I’d want to go down there.”

“Huh?” I said. I turned to Sam. “Why not?”

She backed away from the hole. “Let’s get out of here before one of us falls down that thing, can’t climb out, and encounters a bear or an insane flower or whatever.”

I couldn’t believe what she was saying. This had been one of our best leads so far!

And I still can’t believe that I followed her outta there after that. Who knows, maybe the insane flower would’ve been cool.

 

The sun was rising when we realized that we’d found nothing extraordinary on the hillish-mountain (If I could call it that) that bordered Havenland.

Actually, that cave had been interesting, but Sam had been really against going down there. She sucked the fun outta that part, let me tell ya.

We were on our way back to Sam’s house now and she wouldn’t stop checking her phone.

“Five,” Sam grumbled.

“Five what? Like what time it is?”

She didn’t specify and kept walking.

It’s annoying when almost everyone you know is taller than ya. I had to jog to keep up with Sam.

We made it back to the bottom of the hill and discarded our walking sticks.

She picked up the pace. Her hand tightly gripped one of her bookbag straps.

“What’s going on?” I huffed as I ran after her. “Why’re we rushing?”

“Father could wake up within the hour,” she said. “We need to get back home before he suspects a thing.”

“When does he usually get up?” I asked.

She didn’t answer me and stopped at a walk signal. Her eyes were trained on the brightening sky.

If we weren’t in a hurry, I’d be admiring it. There weren’t any clouds, and the sun had started rising.

The walk signal changed and Sam marched across with me hot on her heels. If she was such in a rush, why’d she stop for it? There weren’t many people out and about this morning.

“Hey!”

I spoke too soon.

Sam froze up right as her feet found the sidewalk.

I found myself instinctively reaching into my pockets.

My hand dropped away from them as I berated myself. No, bad Mario. You dunno if it’s a threat.

Despite what I was telling myself, Sam treated the voice like it was one. Her head twisted around as she searched for the speaker.

“What are you doing?” the same voice yelled. “Why are you running from the woods?”

Sam’s pupils grew. She took a step back.

“Who’s that?” I asked her.

“Hello?” the voice called. “If you don’t answer, I’m calling the police!”

The confusion on her face dissolved absolute panic as she looked up. As in, a “deer-in-the-headlights” kinda terror.

I had no time to react to Sam taking off down the sidewalk. She ran past the next street corner.

I glanced up at the voice. What kind of person could send her into a frenzy like that?

The teenage boy several stories above me laughed and shut his window closed.


	7. Day Four/Five - Part One

_Sam_

“What happened back there?”

“Who was that guy?”

“Why were you afraid of him?”

Mario didn’t know when to be quiet, did he? It felt as if it’d take forever to get home with his stupid questions popping up every minute or so.

As I continued walking on, I focused on an image of my house to prevent my thoughts from leaking out to him.

We crossed a street that lacked a walk signal. Traffic was still nonexistent, which I was glad for as I rushed across to the next sidewalk.

“Sam, please talk to me. Holding it in’s pretty bad for you.”

He was being stupid if he believed it was that simple. Sure, let me let tell him my personal problems. Let’s see if he’s still around to listen at the end.

Besides, if he was a terrible doctor, how would he make it as a psychologist?

“It’s okay. I’ll listen.”

I gave him a quick glance-over. That stupid red hat of his hung was hanging lopsided over his head.

Mario quickened his pace to keep up with me. “What was the deal with that guy earlier? Do you know him?”

The sidewalk continued rolling away under my feet.

I don’t often speak to people about my feelings. Father was always busy and psychologists, with all their stupid questions and no actual solutions, never worked for me. Nobody I knew around here ever wanted to hear me out, unless you count Tabitha as a person.

Should I be discussing them with Mario of all people? Sure he’s been a nice person, but why would I be burdening him with my problems? He had enough of his own, being stuck here in my world and tethered to my mind.

Yet he was here jogging beside me. He was waiting for my response.

I opened my mouth. With an exhale, I said, “Leave me alone.”

As much as he wanted me to explain everything, I wasn’t going to. I was fine keeping everything to myself.

But screw that kid in the window.

Screw everybody.

 

I spent most of Sunday out like a light. But all it really did was lead into a long-dreaded Monday morning.

By “long-dreaded”, I mean that it was time for school again. It was the start of another week of misery, torture, and who knows what else.

I came down the stairs from my room, already dressed for the day. My sneakers creaked the floor around them as I made my way to the kitchen.

_“Maybe today will be normal,”_ I had told myself this morning. _“Maybe I’ll survive it.”_

Tabitha came scrambling out of the hallway leading to our bathroom. I stopped and watched as she flew across the floor to the living room.

_Sure. “Normal”. Since when was a day ever “normal” around here?_

Tabitha loudly meowed. What was she up to?

I didn’t feel like finding out. Let her do whatever a cat does. _Since I moved here to get peace and quiet._

_There’s no such thing as peace and quiet. You’re deluding yourself, Sam._

Grunting, I walked into the kitchen and went up to the fridge. I ripped it open.

“Mornin’!”

A tremble raced through my body. I froze up as cold air slammed into my skin.

That voice. It was familiar, squeaky, and Italian.

Mario stood on one of the kitchen chairs, facing away from me. He held the frying pan in one hand.

“Mo-morning,” I stuttered, grabbing ahold of the fridge door. _Geez, you scared me!_

He laughed. “I can’t believe you slept through the rest of Sunday. There were a couple of pretty good programs on TV last night.” He focused on the stove. “Now that I had a better look...”

As he ran his mouth, I dug through the fridge for my breakfast. I plucked last night’s dinner, which had been mashed potatoes, from the top shelf.

Mario stopped his rant and put down his spatula. “Don’t eat that.”

I looked between him and the container. “Why? Are you cooking again?”

“Yeah,” he said, “and I might’ve overdone it.”

He moved to the side, showing off a large plate stacked high with steaming, fried batter behind him. An opened bottle of maple syrup was next to it.

“Pancakes?” I felt the container slip from my fingers. It made a dull thump against the floor.

“That’s not all.” Mario reached over and lifted the one at the top of the stack.

Dark spots covered the underside of the pancake he showed me. And they were chocolate.

Chocolate. Freaking. Chips.

“They all ended up on the bottom,” he told me. “I have no idea how that happened.”

_You tried._

“That I did,” Mario replied.

I groaned. _I wish that you’d stop reading my mind._

“Can’t help it,” he said. He flipped the pancake currently on his frying pan. “Don’t be so negative with yourself. It’s not healthy.”

_Says the “doctor”._  "But I guess I’ll be at the table.”

“Okie-dokie.”

Chocolate chip pancakes, though? My eyes couldn’t peel themselves away from the platter even as I sat at the table.

* * *

_Mario_

An hour after breakfast, Sam was out the door.

“Have a good day,” I called after her. “See ya!”

“Yeah, sure,” Sam said. _He’ll probably be in my head still._

She shut the door closed behind her.

Then she was gone.

I went straight to the living room, holding a plate of chocolate chip pancakes that were leftover from our breakfast. I dropped it on the table in front of me and got the TV remote.

_“Maybe today will be normal,”_ I’d heard her think. _“Maybe I’ll survive it.”_

With how unhappy she’d been this morning, it made me wonder what had happened to her the other day. She’d had a strong negative reaction to that guy in the window.

I guess they don’t like each other?

Or maybe all there was to it was that she’d been startled by the kid’s yelling.

Yeah. That had to be it. Maybe it was best that I left the matter alone. There wasn’t any reason to annoy Sam about it.

The school bus’ horn went off as my finger was reaching for the power button.

I looked out the window. Might as well see her off.

Sam raced up to the bus. _Okay, geez. I’m coming._

Its’ horn honked again. Like that other time, I could see the driver. His face was scrunched up as he looked down at an object in his hand.

As she got to the door, there was shouting.

I looked to the side. A boy came running from across the street.

_That’s one of the kids we saw a couple days ago,_ I realized, leaning closer to the window.

Sam had gotten a foot on the bus steps when the boy ran up next to her. She had started lifting her other leg.

The boy flew forward. He also put his foot on the stairs.

The two of them exchanged glances. She scowled.

The boy’s expression was blank.

Sam’s mouth opened. I’m not an expert in lip-reading, but I’m pretty sure she said “Move,” to him. Either that, or she mooed.

What in the world was I going on about? It was obviously that first one.

The boy ignored her. He lifted the rest of his weight on to the stairs.

Her scowl deepened. She made a move up to the next step.

Midstep, the boy thrust his elbow out. His teeth showed as he smiled.

She hunched over. He had hit her square in the ribs.

My mouth dropped open. _WHAT?_

She pushed against the door of the bus, grimacing. _Ow!_

I pressed my face against the window. What kinda guy elbows a girl that hard just to get on to the bus?

“Sam!” I yelled.

She didn’t look back at me. She probably couldn’t hear me. Is this how we’re playing, Dennis? I have half a mind to kick your ass right now.

I looked up at the driver. Maybe he’ll notice what’s up?

Nope. Their driver was still fiddling with that thing in his hands.

Dennis, that boy, climbed the other two steps up to the top while the driver was distracted. He smirked back at Sam.

She grasped her side. _YOU JERK!_ She trembled as she took in a large breath. _I hate having to ride this stupid bus every day._

I cringed in sympathy.

_Should you run out there and go with her?_ I thought. _Nobody’s gonna see you follow her._

_Yeah, but she’s leaving for school. Remember the last time you were there? You-_

_I know!_

Oh great. Now I’m doing what she has a bad habit doing; I’m blabbering to myself.

Sam had limped on to the bus. Both she and that boy were gone.

That didn’t matter. I could still hear her thoughts.

_Stupid bus driver. He didn’t even notice what that asshole did to me. Quit texting your stupid girlfriend!_

Maybe if I moved now, I could still catch up to her.

_Hey! Quit laughing at me! What did I ever do to you, huh?_

Now she was being laughed at? What was going on in there?

Without even seeing what was going on, it made me think of when I was in school. We’d had our share of unsavory people back then. One I remembered pretty well was a complete jerk when he was a kid, and for me, a guy who tries to see the brightest sides of everyone, that’s saying something.

This particular bully I remember had been held back at least once, which made them older and tougher than the rest of the class. They often used their brute strength to terrorize the other kids, not caring if anybody got hurt. The playground was almost always taken hostage, and he worked completely alone to keep it that way. The worst part of all, nobody’s school lunches were safe from their bottomless stomachs. They ate anything they found to be delicious in the cafeteria even if they had to fight a scrawny kid for it.

It was an absolutely terrible time in their life. It contributed as to why they’d dropped out of school and nearly fell into a depression.

Coming back around to the present, I tried squinting through the bus windows. That didn’t help me; they were too dark to see through.

_Idiots,_ Sam thought. _Why do I put up with this shit?_

I pulled back from the window. Now I was going after her.

I jumped off the couch, scooping up my boots along the way and shoving them on. I grabbed my hat and dug through my pockets for my gloves.

My bare hand brushed through my slimy-feeling hair. When was the last time I’d taken a shower? _Gross._

That had to wait for later. I threw open the front door and shut it behind me. I forgoed the porch steps, hopping over them instead.

As I made it into the yard, the bus started moving. Guess that driver was done doing whatever the heck he was doing.

“Wait!” I yelled. “Stop!”

All the windows on the bus were closed, so Sam couldn’t hear me. She couldn’t warn the bus driver.

Would she have anyway? I wouldn’t know, as the bus flew off like a rocket.

The bus blew past the stop sign. A car horn blared in the intersection ahead.

My jaw dropped open. Should I still go after her?

No, that was stupid. I may be a fast runner; I may be able to get to the Darklands from Peach’s castle in a day, but I wouldn’t be able to keep up with a vehicle going far over the speed limit. I didn’t even know the way to Sam’s school.

I collapsed on to the curb. At this point, all I could do was wish that Sam had a good day. She needed it after what that Dennis guy did to her.

She should tell somebody about what happened. Her relationship with that guy may be bad, but it didn’t justify him doing that!

For a few minutes, I watched the world around me. One of Sam’s neighbors a few houses down came out and got into a minivan. As she pulled out her driveway, another guy, who wore a puffy coat, came by walking a dog. Neither of them noticed me as they went passed.

So what am I doing today? I asked myself. I started shivering in the cold winter morning.

I guess I could play some more 3D World. When Sam and I had stopped, we had made it to “World 5”.

Why would they call it that? It’s part of the sprixie kingdom. Everything but that amusement park of Bowser’s at the end was part of it.

Eh, probably doesn’t matter. It’d be interesting to see how they’d depicted the rest of my adventures there.

I got up and walked back towards the house. A warm, tingly feeling enveloped my chest.

Huh? I stopped walking and grasped my shirt.

Yeah, that’s not normal. What was this?

My feet started to slide against the floor. What was I doing? Standing on a patch of ice?

When I looked down, I found that wasn’t it. I was on the bare sidewalk and my feet were dragging themselves forward.

I tried buckling my legs.

That didn’t help. I kept sliding.

I dug my boots into the ground.

Still didn’t work. Was it hopeless?

What now?

The sliding got faster. Some strange invisible force was pushing me down the street!

I yelped, trying to keep my balance as I flew forward. “What the heck?” Forget the bus being a rocket, I was becoming one!

I flew passed the guy with the dog. Neither of them looked up, and the leash didn’t twitch as I passed through it.

It was when I had made it to the stop sign and made the turn Sam’s bus had made earlier that I realized the force might’ve been taking me after her. So maybe I could go after Sam this way! I watched the ground continue to zip by me. But why is this happening?

The invisible force didn’t wait for me to finish my thoughts. It tugged harder and I went faster.

I squealed as I lost my balance. I fell in the middle of the street.

The invisible force didn’t care. It still dragged me.

Now I saw the bright yellow bus in front of me. It was speeding, but I was catching up.

Aaaaand it looked like I was about to slam into the back of the bus.

“Oh geez!” I yelled.

I shut my eyes, bracing for impact. I expected to hit it at full force and end up hurting all over.

Ten seconds passed. I knew I should’ve hit the back door by now.

I felt nothing, but I still screamed anyway.

Why wasn’t I in pain? Was that a ghost thing?

“WILL YOU QUIT THAT?!” a voice bellowed. “GOD, YOU’RE ANNOYING.”

I gasped and opened my eyes. In front of me was a leathery wall- No, that wasn’t it. Was it a seat?

That had to be it. I was sitting on something of the same material.

I sat up straight. Somehow, I was feeling way taller. I lifted one of my arms.

My palms were long, skinny, and ungloved.

This again? I asked myself. You can’t be serious.

I looked into the window. “My” reflection stared back.

The face in the window had blue eyes, but I otherwise recognized it. The girl in front of me had brown hair with looser curls at the end and a much smaller nose.

In front of me was Sam. Or rather, I was her, and she was going back to school.

Oh no.

 

In the seat next to me was Sam's bag. I picked it up and pressed it against my chest.

_This is bad. This is really bad._ I turned from the window. _I'm possessing her again!_

If she didn't come back to her senses soon, I had to deal with school again! I don't remember how to do math or make things explode in science. I don't even know what kind of history her world has.

What could I do to get out of this? Hide until the day is over? Hit my head on a wall hoping that she wakes up again?

No, that second one was a stupid idea. I'd been seen as crazy.

All around me, people were chatting away.

"Houston, we have a problem."

"What the hell is that? A spider?"

"I’ve never understood what your deal was."

I unzippered Sam's bag and dug through its contents. It'd help if she had a class schedule on her.

"Uh, hello?"

I pulled out one of the three binders in the largest pocket. It read "Astronomy" on the front. I opened it and leafed through Sam's notes. I stopped at:

**(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)**

_Order of the planets: Mercury (Closest to the sun, therefore the fastest to go around it), Venus (Named after the worst of the Roman/Greek gods), Earth (Our planet), Mars (The red planet), Jupiter (The gas giant), Saturn, Uranus ('Kay), and Neptune._

_Pluto/Hades is best Roman/Greek god despite not related the above (It’s a dwarf planet)._

**(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)**

Cool, but that didn't help. I closed the binder, put it back into the bag, and zippered the top pocket shut.

The other two might be other subjects. They'd get me nowhere.

"I'm not the space cow! You are!"

"I'm right here."

"Is that a squashed spider? Gross! We should move seats."

I opened the next pocket. This one had two folders, which I read over.

English and health? So more subjects. Nothing to see here.

"Hey, could you move over? We'd like to get away from that disgusting thing on our window."

"I'm the goat! I'm the damn goat!"

"You see, this is why people don't like you. You’re not fun to deal with."

"I. AM. THE. GOAT!"

"I regret even asking."

"Why you hate people so much?"

I opened the third pocket. Sam's phone and a set of keys were the only things in there, so I shut it closed.

"Do you have any friends?"

My hand moved to the smallest pocket's zipper. I yanked it open.

Inside this pocket were a few pieces of paper. I opened one of them:

**(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)**

_GRADES AS Of JANUARY 31st:_

_(Minimum to pass: 65)_

_Period 1 (8:00 - 8:50) - FREE (FREE) - N/A_

_Period 2 (9:00 - 9:50) - English (Room 102) - 64_

_Period 3 (10:00 - 10:50) - Western Civ (Room 210) - 60_

_Period 4 (11:00 -11:50) - Math (Room 107) - 63_

_Period 5 (12:00 - 12:50) - LUNCH (Cafeteria/School Grounds) - N/A_

_Period 6 (1:00 - 1:50) - Astronomy (Room 204) - 73_

_Period 7 (2:00 - 2:50) - Gym (Gym) - 65_

_Period 7 (2:00 - 2:50) - Health (Room 101) - Tuesdays, Thursdays - 80_

**(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)**

Sam's dad had been right when he said she could flop out of school. All she was doing good in were astronomy and health.

At least I had a schedule to work off of. I held on to it as I zippered the bag back up.

"If you're not going to answer my questions about your pathetic social life, can I ask about the red hat?"

That was what made me perk up. "Yeah?”

A boy across the aisle from me closed the top some sort of dark-colored device and put it away.

"The, uh, oversized hat,” he said. “Do you want to be made fun of?"

My eyes drifted upwards as I noticed the shelf of red there. The guy had a point; my hat was big compared to Sam's head. I reached up and removed it.

"Oh."

"What?" I asked.

"Sorry," the boy said, "I was sure that your stupid hat stood for something else.”

Now I looked down at the red "M" emblem on the front of my hat. "’Something else’?" Maybe he was referring to Diddy Kong? Assuming these guys knew about Donkey and his friends, of course.

"Forget it,” he said. He turned away.

"No, tell me."

He turned back around to me. His mouth fell open. Maybe he hadn’t expected me to talk back?

Sam might've not, but I'm different. I couldn't help myself.

"I already told you," he said as he brushed a lock of black hair from his eyes, "forget it."

"You're right about it being kinda big on me,” I said. “Thanks for pointing that out."

I opened Sam's bookbag and put my hat inside the pocket with the folders.

"I don't know what act you're pulling, but sounding like Super Mario and wearing his hat won't win you any fans."

Naturally, I replied with, "Maybe because I am him?"

The boy furrowed his brows.

Aaaaaand that’s when I realized what I had told him. I pushed myself closer to the wall and laughed quietly. Whoops.

The boy looked away from me. "Weirdo."

That was it. He was ignoring me now.

I glanced out of my own window. This was going to be a long day.

 

"Time to get off, ya stinkers," the bus driver yelled.

Everyone started piling off of the bus. I shouldered Sam's bag as I stood up.

I realized that there wasn't any structure to how these people left the bus. A lot of them pushed and shoved their way past others. Nobody cared if they were shoving a younger kid out of the way as long as they could leave.

I saw this first-hand when I found myself following a really muscular boy. He pushed passed a girl even shorter than Sam, but still taller than me (If I'd actually been me here).

She fell backward into her seat.

The guy didn’t stop or apologize. He kept going down the aisle.

That’s rude, I thought.

I was quick to come up from behind him. I opened my mouth and offered my hand to the girl-

She stood back up by herself.

"I'm fine,” she said.

I stepped back to let her squeeze by me.

When she was gone, somebody else behind me groaned.

"You should've kept going," they said. “I don't got all day here."

I rolled my eyes and kept walking. Sorry if I was trying to be courteous.

Once I got off the bus myself, I got a good look at the brown brick building in front of me. It was about three stories high and had a ton of large windows. At its top was a red and white striped flag with some blue in a corner.

Must be the American flag.

I squinted for a better look at it.

There were a bunch of white stars inside of the blue square.

I wonder what those stand for. Maybe Sam could tell me once she wakes up?

If she wakes up at all. What if I did hav’ta hit my head for her to come back?

No, don't think that way, I said to myself. I'm sure she'll be back soon.

Right?


	8. Day Five - Part Two

_Mario_

I went over Sam’s class schedule again as I walked into the building:

**(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)**

_Period 1 (8:00 - 8:50) - FREE (FREE)_

Period 2 (9:00 - 9:50) - English (Room 102)

Period 3 (10:00 - 10:50) - Western Civ (Room 210)

Period 4 (11:00 -11:50) - Math (Room 107)

Period 5 (12:00 - 12:50) - LUNCH (Cafeteria/School Grounds)

Period 6 (1:00 - 1:50) - Astronomy (Room 204)

Period 7 (2:00 - 2:50) - Gym (Gym)

Period 7 (2:00 - 2:50) - Health (Room 101) - Tuesdays, Thursdays

**(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)**

Huh. Lucky her. She gets two free periods. When I went to school, they never gave us much free time. It was all ‘you need a good education at all hours of the day’ and ‘lunch isn’t supposed to be that long!’

I’m _so_ glad I don’t need to deal with school anymore. I get to do whatever I want now.

 _Except today,_ a thought reminded me.

Maybe if I was lucky, the day will go by quick. And hey, it could turn out to be good.

 _There’s only one way to find out._ I started to walk down the hallway.

“Let’sa go.”

 

_\- FREE -_

The first bell rang as I sat down at a table in the commons. I slipped my bag off and put it down on the seat next to me.

 _Let’s take a look at that English folder._ So, of course, I pulled it out and opened it up.

I spent the next while scanning over Sam’s notes. Apparently she’s been reading a book in class called _The Hobbit._ From what I gathered, it sounded pretty cool. A bunch of dwarves, a wizard, and the book’s namesake, a hobbit, whatever that is, go on an adventure to steal treasure from a dragon.

According to what Sam had written down about the book, the group had left this place called the “Shire” a while back.

 _I wonder if she has_ The Hobbit _on her._ If I was going to that class next period, I might as well read it.

The book ended up being behind in the folder’s back sleeve. I slipped it out.

The illustration on the book’s cover was pretty simple. There were a bunch of mountains in the forefront and a red sun in the back. Two golden birds soared overhead the mountains.

I cracked it open and flipped through the first few pages. There was a map that I skipped over since half of the symbols on it made no sense. After that was some standard stuff, like two tables of contents for chapters and illustrations and a note about runic symbols on the map. That last one would’ve been useful if it had come _earlier_!

I ended up skipping the thing about runes. Would an English class be testing for those? I’d guess not.

 

 _Okay, so Bilbo’s being visited by that Gandalf wizard and the dwarves now. Why are they_ singing? _And why are there so many dwarves?_

    You could clearly see I was “enjoying” this book. I was already having trouble remembering all these characters’ names and the songs that popped up every once in a while often took me out of the book.

 _Why are they assigning this kinda stuff to Sam?_ I wondered. _What grade is she in? Is she in some sorta advanced English class? And since when did stories include songs that you can’t hear the music to? Do I have to make my own rhythm to it? I mean, it seems to rhyme..._

A couple of chairs screeched against the floor.

I roughly shut the book closed.

Sitting down at my table were two guys.

The first would’ve been a foot taller than me if I’d been standing. His long red hair hung loosely behind him and his face was swamped in freckles.

The other boy was a few inches shorter than him. He brushed a tuft of brown hair out of his eyes.

“Hi?” I said.

Those guys ignored me greeting them and continued sitting there. They both had blank expressions on their faces. They stayed that way as I made eye contact with them.

The redhead’s eyes wandered to his friends. He bit his lip.

We sat in uncomfortable silence.

I reached over to grab my bag. As soon as I had it in my lap-

“Morning, Sammy,” a third guy said. He settled into that chair. “Thank you very much.”

Okay, who’re these people? Did Sam know them? Were they her friends?

The first boy leaned towards me.

I pulled away as he got dangerously close to my face. _I guess not?_

“So you decided to wear contacts today?” he said. “That’s a shame. I like brown eyes.”

There wasn’t any helping that; it’s what apparently happens I possess Sam. “Can I ask why ya’ll are sitting here?”

The second guy cracked a big smile. “That’s the question we wanna ask you. This is our table.”

“I got here first,” I said. “Go get another one.”

The two guys started laughing. The first one jabbed his elbow into his friend’s side.

The second boy recoiled. He put a hand on his side as the first pulled back.

“Wow, you’re stupid,” he said. “This is our spot. Don’t you remember Dennis telling you that back on the first day?”

“No,” I said, turning to the first boy. _Dennis?_

This was the guy who had elbowed Sam earlier! Why hadn’t I realized that?

“Wow,” he snickered, “you’re not normally this dense, Sammy.”

“Actually,” the third boy spoke up, “she told me that she wasn’t Sammy.”

The second tilted his head. “Oh, right. She believes she’s freaking Mario?”

I withdrew into my seat. _Wow, why was I so stupid? Why did I say that back on the bus?_

“What,” Dennis said.

The third boy shrugged.

“What?” Dennis asked.

_What have I done?_

“Seriously,” he repeated. “ _What?_ ”

“Yeah. She wants to be a forty-year-old Italian man. Maybe she has a thing for old-”

I brought my fist down on the hard wooden table. It stung and I was cringing, but I could ignore it.

Everyone’s attention went back to me.

“I’M TWENTY GODS DARNIT FOUR!” I seethed.

The third boy gasped.

“Why doesn’t anybody ever get it right?” I yelled at them. “Is it my ‘stache?” I pointed at my face. “ _Is it_?”

“I believe we’ve hit a nerve!” Dennis cackled. “Great job, Rick.”

“Uh,” the third boy, who I now knew to be Rick, said, “table?”

We all looked down.

“Oh. My. God,” somebody whispered.

Two halves of a wooden table were now laying on the floor in front of me.

My jaw fell open.

The second boy spoke up. “Sammy, you don’t have a “stache”. You’re a girl.”

_Oh no._

A small crowd had begun gathering around us. They stared between me and the table.

 _What’ve I done?_ It was the convenience store all over again, except this time I was surrounded by a hoard of teenagers!

Dennis, Rick, that other kid, and I sat uncomfortably in our seats. I noticed that Rick was fidgeting.

I took in a looooooooong breath and exhaled. I picked up Sam’s bag.

“I’ve gotta go,” I said. “Be seeing ya.” I then stood.

The small crowd parted around me as I left the scene. People in it were whispering.

I blocked out what they said as I broke free of the crowd. I walked towards the closest hallway to our table.

There was a big metal door blocking the hallway entrance. I pushed it open and went through.

Once it closed behind me, I slumped against the wall.

To say Sam’s not gonna be pleased when she wakes up is an understatement.

 

_-ENGLISH-_

“Ramona Abington?”

“Here!”

“Ashley Addison?”

“I’m here!”

“Lewis Ainger?”

“Here!”

“Sammy Brown?”

Nobody spoke up.

I shuffled through Sam’s papers.

“Sammy?”

That name had been called again. That couldn’t be me, right? Sam had said her name was, obviously, Sam. I’d assumed that Sammy was a pet name those guys from earlier, and her dad, had for her.

I sat up. “Yeah?”

The teacher up front folded her arms. “What’ve I told you about not paying attention?”

“‘Pay attention?’” I guessed.

“Yes,” she said. “Which I hope you will during your make-up test.”

My papers fell out of my hands and floated to the floor. I gaped at her.

_A make-up test?_

Oh great, I was probably gonna fail! I‘ve only read partway through _The Hobbit_ ’s first chapter with all the dwarves and the singing and whatever the heck happened afterwards because of that whole incident back in the commons. When had there been a part about spiders? Maybe I should’ve skimmed the book instead?

AUGH! This is gonna sound way uncharacteristic of me, but screw school! I’m going nuts and it’s only “my” first class of the day!

_Okay. Calm yourself, Mario. We don’t wanna go crazy again._

...

So hold up a sec. Is Sam’s actual name Sammy?

Huh?

 

_-WESTERN CIVILIZATION-_

“I sure screwed up,” I groaned. “Sorry, Sam.”

I had been ready to hit my head on my desk when the teacher for this period walked into the room.

“Morning, class!” he said. He looked around the room until his eyes landed on me.

I grabbed the binder for this period and sat up.

“Hello?” I said.

“Sam? I was wondering if you could take last week’s test.”

Instead of answering him, I actually did smack my head against my desk. It wasn’t hard; I didn’t wanna risk giving Sam an actual concussion, but I had to.

_DARN IT!_

 

_-LUNCH (‘CAUSE MATH IS BORING AND THERE’S NO CHANGING THAT)-_

It was lunch. _Thank the Mushroom gods._ Not only that but after lunch, I only had two classes left.

I wish Sam was here to do them. After the last two periods, I felt completely done with everything.

 _Are we sure that banging my head hard enough isn’t going to bring her back?_ I asked myself as I walked out of the cafeteria. _It did last time._

_No way. You’d be hurt._

_Yeah, but would it be me or her suffering from it?_

I sat down at a table with a burger on my plate. I would’ve also taken some fries, but Sam’s card balance had been low.

 _Guess this is my lunch._ I lifted the burger to my mouth.

I bit into it. Ketchup spilled out onto my hand.

 _But today hasn’t been my day._ I moved to wipe it off with a napkin. When I was finished, I wiggled my fingers. _It’s_ still _sticky._

I grabbed another napkin and continued working on those spots. Some more of the stickiness came off, but I still felt it in my palm. I was going to need water to wash it off.

A strange buzz filled the room. I looked up from what I was doing at an intercom on a wall.

“Is this thing on?”

Somebody in the lunch crowd snorted.

A couple of booms came from the intercom.

The woman on the other end said, “Ah, okay. Thank you.” There was some shuffling around of papers. She then cleared her voice. “May we, um, please see Sammy Brown at the principal’s office?”

Now everyone’s eyes turned on me.

I slowly slid down instead of out of my seat. _That sucks too._

 

_-THE PRINCIPAL’S OFFICE-_

“So, Ms. Brown,” an older man said as I came into the room, “we’ve received an anonymous tip that you were the one who _destroyed_ a table in the commons. Is this true?”

I lowered my head. “Yes, sir.”

“As much as I admire your skill in karate, you will have detention during lunchtime for the rest of the week.” He folded his arms over the table. “Oh, and we’ll be notifying your parents and or legal guardians shortly.”

“...Yes, sir.” _Greeeeeeaaaaaat._ Now Sam’s dad was going to get involved.

I’ll be lucky if the least Sam does is kick me out of the house again.

 

_-ASTRONOMY-_

“Sam?”

_I swear, if this about another test, I’ll scream._

The teacher, who’d been walking around the room, held a paper out to me.

Okay, I didn’t scream. Instead, I took it and deflated into my seat.

“Oh no.”

**(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)**

_Astronomy Research Project # 3:_

_DUE: March 1st_

_OBJECTIVE: Research a planet of your choice (Cannot be a planet you’ve chosen already). Describe your planet, what moons (If any) it has, and what star it orbits. Go into detail as to what they are made of (You may only speculate if not enough research has been done on that front)._

_Points will be deducted for inaccuracy, as they will be for blatant spelling and grammar mistakes._

_EXTRA CREDIT: Do two planets._

**(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)**

“You okay there?” the teacher asked. “Last I checked, you did great on these projects.”

I found myself smiling for once. “I was pretty sure it was going to be another test.”

He smiled back and said, “Tell your dad I said hi.”

My smile dropped as I remembered what happened during lunch. My head smacked against a table for the tenth time that day.

The rest of astronomy went pretty well. All I did was sit and listen to the teacher as he went on and on, though I almost dozed off at times.

Since when was outer space so complicated?

 

_-GYM-_

NOTHING. HAPPENED.

Gym class isn’t supposed to be about sitting around on the bleachers. I get that we had substitute teachers, but they should’ve given us _something_ athletic to do!

Oh well. That was probably a good thing since I didn’t hav’ta visit the girl’s locker room. That would’ve been super awkward.

 

The final bell rang. I grabbed my stuff and zipped outside to the bus.

I collapsed into a seat. _Thank goodness!_ Another minute in there and I could’ve exploded.

I glanced out my left-hand window, which I chose since I didn’t want to see that darn school again.

Didn’t mean I could escape the chatter. I pushed myself against the window, trying my best to not be noticeable as people sat down all around me.

“Did you hear about the girl who sliced through one of the common room tables?”

“Yeah. Didn’t she also say something stupid?”

“All I heard about was the table.”

Another conversation: “What was her name? Tammy?

“Pretty sure she goes by Sam. Or is it Sammy?”

“No, it’s Maria.”

“No, Mario.”

“No, Luigi.”

“No, Waluigi!”

“Goddammit, Frank. You always ruin our jokes.”

And another one: “Since when did people identify themselves as video game characters? That’s stupid.”

“Hey! I identify as Ridley and I take offense to that.”

Those two laughed.

Not only did I have a terrible day, but I’ve started a rumor mill.

Great.

 

It was halfway through the bus ride home when a warm feeling emerged from my chest. With it came pain.

I shut my eyes. This throbbing felt a lot like when I’d been pulled to the bus earlier.

 _Maybe she’s coming back?_ Oh, _please_ let that be true. She needed to wake up. I _needed_ her to wake up.

My pain got worse. I felt grateful that nobody had sat across from me. They’d probably think I’m having a heart attack!

A thought suddenly echoed in my mind. It didn’t belong to me.

_“What happened?”_

“Sam?” I asked, opening my eyes. The thing I was sitting on was soft and squishy.

I clawed at my face. I felt something soft under my nose.

 _I have my ‘stache back!_ That meant I was me again!

_“Why is everything dark? Where am I?”_

“Sam!” I shouted. I sat up.

Her eyes were closed, but her thoughts echoed loud and clear. _“Wha-what?”_

“Get up!”

Sam suddenly lurched up. She was shivering.

I started to too. We both had to take a minute to recover from our shaking fits.

As Sam did, she blinked a few times and looked down.

_“Get. Off. My lap.”_

I glanced down. I felt my face burn as I saw my legs dangling off Sam’s side.

“O-oh,” I whimpered. “Geez.”

Sam pushed against my back. _“Please?”_

I didn’t move.

 _“Things are bad enough now,”_ she groused.

“You already know?” I asked, my voice barely rising above a whisper.

 

_“WILL YOU QUIT THAT?” a voice bellowed. “GOD, YOU ARE SO ANNOYING.”_

 

_“I’M TWENTY GODS DARNIT FOUR!”_

_Rick gasped._

_“Why doesn’t anybody ever get it right? Is it my ‘stache? Is it?”_

 

_“Sammy Brown? ...Sammy?”_

 

_“So, Ms. Brown. We’ve received an anonymous tip that you were the one who destroyed a table in the commons. Is this true?”_

_“Yes, sir.”_

_“As much as I admire your skill in karate, you will have detention during lunchtime for the rest of the week.”_

 

 _“Yes,”_ she bluntly replied.

“I-I…”

Sam pushed against my back again.

I slid off her lap and into the seat next to her.

She crossed one leg over the other as she turned away from me.

We rode the rest of the way home in silence.

 

Sam kicked off her sneakers. Her bookbag and coat fell to the floor.

I braced myself for the mother of all meltdowns. I edged towards the living room.

She bent back down for her bookbag and tossed it over her right shoulder. Her hand clutched its strap.

I stopped at the archway that marked the living room’s entrance. I searched along the wall for the light switch.

The wooden stairs behind me creaked. I looked over at them.

Sam was climbing up to her room.

Shouldn’t this the part where she’d blow up on me? Maybe I shouldn’t ask this in case I jinx myself, but _why_ was she leaving?

“Hey,” I said.

She didn’t reply. She reached the first flight.

“Where are you going?”

She stopped walking. Her head swiveled toward me. Her eyes hardened.

I suddenly regretted asking her that question.

I slowly made my way over the staircase and went up a step.

She stood there at the top. She still glared at me.

I said, “Sam, what’s wro-”

“Just leave me alone.”

Before I had the chance to respond, she turned on her heel and flew up the rest of the steps.

The bedroom door slammed shut behind her.

* * *

_Sam_

As soon as I had locked myself in, I rushed to my bed and leaped into it.

My bookbag whacked me in the back as I collapsed on to the mattress.

 

_I moved up to the next step. There was no way I was letting this asshole get a seat before me._

_Something jabbed itself into my side._

_Pain exploded from it. I gasped and hunched over. “_ Ow!”

Dennis pulled his elbow away.

Is this how we’re playing, Dennis? _I thought._ I have half a mind to kick your ass right now.

_He only smirked at me as he climbed the rest of the way up._

YOU JERK! _I swallowed some air as I grasped my throbbing side._ I hate having to ride this stupid bus every day.

 

I shoved my face into my pillow.

 

_“Father could wake up within the hour,” I told Mario. “We need to get home before he suspects a thing.”_

_“When_ does _he usually get up?” Mario asked._

_We stopped at a walk signal. However, that wasn’t what I was focused on._

_The sun had begun rising. With no clouds to help, I had to squint at it._

_I looked back down as the signal changed to walk. I went across the street._

_Mario’s boots hit the ground behind me._

_“Hey!”_

_I stopped._

_That voice. It couldn’t be…_

_My body tensed as I looked around._

_“What are you doing? Why are you running from the woods?”_

_I stepped back._

_“Who’s that?” Mario asked me._

_“Hello?” the voice shouted. “If you don’t answer, I’m calling the police!”_

_The police?! What the-_ No.

_I had found the speaker. It was a boy my age, whose head was sticking out his window. He was one of Dennis’ stupid friends, Theo._

_He smiled down at me._

_I froze up._

_Oh god, did he_ live _here?_

_We stood there for a minute or so._

_Finally, my courage found me, and I zipped around to the next street corner. I left Mario behind._

 

My angry cry was muffled by the pillow.

There was creaking on the stairs and three soft knocks on the door.

I turned towards the wall. _“Mario, I know that’s you.”_

Another three knocks.

 _“Leave,”_ I said.

A few minutes passed. Once I was sure he was gone, I tossed off my bookbag and wrapped my blanket around me.

 

Sometime later, I heard a “Meow” from underneath me. I turned away from the wall right as Tabitha emerged from under the bed carrying a toy mouse in her mouth.

“Hey,” I whispered to her. “I didn’t know you were here.”

She bit down hard on the toy mouse, which squeaked.

I tossed my hand over the side and stroked the top of the cat’s head.

She purred.

I then patted the mattress.

The cat leaped up next to me. She spat the mouse out and walked up to my face.

We stared into each other’s eyes.

And before long, I was closing mine again.

 

I awoke to a large hand on my back.

Tabitha was gone. In her place was my dad.

“Get up,” he demanded.

“No,” I growled, rolling away. “I already know what I did wrong. Go away.”

He shook me some more.

When I didn’t respond, he stood up.

I opened my eyes.

My phone was missing from the nightstand. Father held it as he walked out of the room.

The door closed behind him before I could protest.

 

When I was disturbed again, it was because of a third round of three familiar knocks on the door.

I sat up. “ _Oh great. You’re back.”_

He didn’t respond.

The sun had set an hour ago. The resulting darkness left me squinting at the door.

Something slid underneath it and made a scratchy noise against the wooden floor.

I squinted more.

It was a piece of paper. I mean, I think it was?

I turned on the lamp by my nightstand and hopped out of bed. I walked over to the door.

The thing on the floor _was_ a paper. I picked it up.

It took some time to decipher the chicken scratch, but I was sure that it read:

**(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)**

_Hey Sam._

_I wanted to check on you._

_I feel pretty bad about what happened today. Neither of us had expected me to possess you, and going by what I’ve been seeing from your thoughts, my actions while doing so were inexcusable._

_I should’ve kept quiet. I should’ve walked away instead of engaging those guys you hate so much. And I_ really _shouldn’t have gotten so mad when those guys started speculating on my age._

_Gotta admit, that’s a strange berserk button of mine. Then again, I didn’t have people questioning how old I was back home._

_AND OF COURSE I GO OFF-TOPIC. I am NOT writing a fifth draft of this._

_Ugh. Sorry._

_I haven’t heard any of your thoughts for the past couple of hours. Have you been sleeping? Are you still gonna be asleep when I give this to you?_

_Guess there’s only one way to find out. I’m gonna slide this under the door now._

_Hope you’re up,_

_Mar_

 

_P.S. Your dad’s terrible at hiding things. He put your phone under one of the couch cushions this time._

**(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)**

As I finished reading, a large, chubby, and ungloved hand came in from beneath the door. In its grip was a small pen.

The hand dropped the pen and retreated somewhat. Its’ pointer finger flew forward and flicked the pen at me.

The pen lightly smacked against my side.

Red. It was red. Of course it was red.

I dropped the paper.

The figure on the other side of the door shifted. I could see his green and white-striped socks behind the crack on the bottom.

Sighing, I laid down on the floor.

He stopped moving. He must’ve heard the wood boards in my room creaking.

I uncapped the pen.

Since he didn’t seem to get it even with my mind linked to his, I was going to write back to tell him to screw off. Maybe that would finally drive him away so that I could sleep in peace.

Against my better judgment, I started working on my note to him.


	9. Day Five - Part Three

_ Sam _

**(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)**

_ Mario,  _

_ I’ve already said that I don’t want to be bothered. I’m going back to bed. _

**(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)**

I capped the pen back up and slid both it and the paper back under the door.

He picked them up.

I rose to my knees and telepathically called out to him, “ _ Good night-” _

Mario’s pen came flying from under the door. It smacked against my kneecap.

The paper was back too. The message hurriedly scribbled on it was, “ _ How are you?” _

I laid back down on the floor and grabbed the pen. I wrote back,  **“** _ What did I just say?” _

I rolled the pen back to him, followed by the paper.

As the paper went under the door, his hand slapped down on it.

Mine involuntarily pulled back.

He slid it back into the room.

_ ‘How are you?’ _ was circled this time.

I stared at it.

He was persistent. I’ll give him that.

I picked up the pen that he had tossed back at me and wrote,  _ “Why would you care?’ _

I passed it back to him.

His response?  _ “‘Cause I’ve seen what’s happened to you these past couple of days. I wanna know what’s going on.” _

_ “Shouldn’t you be more worried about finding a way home?” _

_ “Yes, and I’ve been wondering when’s the next time we’re gonna go looking.” _

_ “So why aren’t you thinking about that right now?” _

_ “‘Cause I just spent a day in your shoes. When you ran off afterwards, it made me concerned. _

I paused. I found myself rereading his note.  _ Concerned… About me? _

Mario pulled the paper back towards him.

When he gave it back, it said,  _ “And I’ve said it before: it’s bad for you to be holding anything in. It’s okay to talk to me. Or ya know, write to me. Whichever one you want. _

_ “Either way, I’ll listen.” _

_ “You can’t dig around in my head for the answer?”  _ As invading that would be? 

Why couldn’t I just be left alone?

_ “I only see your current thoughts,”  _ he wrote. _ “Which you’re pretty good at hiding, by the way.” _

_ “Fortunately.” _

The paper sat under the door between us for another long moment. Mario took it again when I didn’t write anything else down.

_ “Did you have dinner?”  _ he asked.  _ “Your dad made lasagna tonight, and I know he came in to try and talk to you. Did he bring a plate?” _

_ “No.” _

_ “Come downstairs. It’s still warm.” _

_ “I’m not hungry.” _

It was a minute before he roughly shoved the paper back at me.

“WHAT?!” the crinkled sheet read. _ “You’re not hungry? It’s dinner! It’s a mandatory meal!” _

_ “Everyone I know says that  _ breakfast  _ is the most important meal of the day.” _

_ “But  _ dinner _!” _

I shook my head as I wrote down,  _ “No thanks.” _

We had completely filled the front and back of the page. When it was coupled with his silence, I wondered if that was the end of it.

At that exact moment, I heard a rip.

_ Damn it,  _ I thought.  _ He has more paper. _

_ “I have plenty,”  _ his next note, which accompanied the first, said. “ _ I’m using that notepad from when we’d thought you’d had a concussion.”  _

Oh, right. I’d forgotten about that.

_ “How about I get your food?”  _ he asked.

_ “I’d need to let you in, so no.” _

_ “Come on.” _

_ “No.” _

I gave the note back to him.

My stomach chose that as good time to growl in protest.

I laid a hand on it.  _ Shut up! _

Mario’s laughter suddenly pierced the previously quiet air. He pulled the note away.

I crossed my arms and laid my head in them.  _ Fine, I’ll admit it. I’m hungry. _

_ “How much do you want?” _

I looked through the crack on the bottom.

Mario’s toes in his socks wriggled in front of my nose.

I scrunched it up. When was the last time he had washed them?

Now I took the time to reread the messages on both sheets of paper. I came to a stop at the part from before we had switched to the next sheet.

_ “When you ran off afterwards, it made me concerned,”  _ he had said. “ _ And I’ve said it before: it’s bad for you to be holding anything in. It’s okay to talk to me…  _

_ “I’ll listen.” _

Spurred on by the moment, I put pen to paper once more.

_ “I don’t really want dinner. I want-” _

My stomach protested against that thought again.  _ No. You need to eat. _

I crossed out what I had been trying to write.

_ “I guess I’ll take whatever’s left, Mar-” _

_ Not that either,  _ the small voice in my head said.

I crossed it out as well.

_ “I’ll co-” _

_ NO, NO, NO!  _ the voice yelled at me.

I dropped the pen. I pushed it and the note under the door.

Once his hand had taken the paper back, I rose to my feet and went for the doorknob.

Mario looked up as the door screeched open. His pen left a messy red trail over whatever he had been writing.

“Let’s go downstairs, Mar,” I said. “I’m eating.”

And more importantly, do what he’s been wanting me to.

Talk.

 

“I have to ask, why did you slip me a note instead of shouting through the door? Wouldn’t that have been easier?”

“‘Cause that wouldn’t have made you come out,” Mario said. His pace quickened to keep up with mine as we entered the kitchen. “You wouldn’t have gotten out of bed.”

“True.”

On the counter was a casserole dish.

I glanced between it and Mario.

Hunger burned in his eyes. Knowing him, that was probably why more than half of the lasagna was gone.

I reached up for the cabinet’s knob. I expected there to a paradise waiting for me inside.

_ Mac and cheese,  _ my mind was thinking.  _ Or heck, maybe a bag of white rice? I should check the fridge while I’m at it. _ My mouth watered as I thought of the possibilities.

I yanked the shutter open, prepared to take the first thing my eyes landed on.

Instead, they widened.

Mario gasped. His face paled.

There was nothing on the shelves this time around. Nothing, but another note.

I flinched away as the plumber next to me cried,

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...!”

 

When Mario was done screaming, I plucked the post-it note from the bare cabinet shelf. It was addressed to me in cursive writing and said:

**(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)**

_ I haven’t been serious about grounding you, have I? _

_ Until your grades improve, I’m taking away both your phone and the snacks. I expect you to be in your room catching up on late work unless I call for you or you have to leave for school. _

_ I don’t want to see you fail out. I’d hate to watch you to end up like your mother. _

_ Oh, and before I forget, I found your “history essay” earlier. The idea of Super Mario being dead and a “familiar” to you is quite strange. Do you eventually plan to write this fanfic? _

_ Whatever it is that you’re doing, I hope you get back to writing the essay soon. Every day it’s late is another day that you lose a point. _

_ Dad _

**(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)**

“What’s a ‘fanfic’?” Mar asked.

_ “You wouldn’t want to know,” _ I said, setting Father’s note down. 

“Why not?”

_ “Because people like to write stories about you and your friends.” _

“Is this related to those  _ Nintendo  _ games?”

_ “Sort of, but most are worse in quality. You _ really  _ wouldn’t want to see what goes on in some of them.” _

“Too late. I’m interested.”

I grabbed an empty plate and began scrapping the rest of the lasagna on to it. _“You shouldn’t be. It’d be bad for your mental health.”_ _And I thought we were here to discuss me.”_

“Fine, sorry,” Mario sighed. He eyed the food. “Guess we’ll tackle that later.”

_ “Great. Now let’s go back upstairs-”  _ I stopped in my tracks and couldn’t help myself from screaming, “WHAT THE FUCK?!”

A tall man in blue and white-striped pajamas had been standing right behind me. He was holding the house phone.

It was Father.

“H-hi…?” I said.

He grabbed my arm and pulled me forward.

Eyes widening, I grasped my plate as best as I could while he dragged me out of the kitchen.

Mario, wearing a similar expression to mine, ran after us.

Everyone walked back to the stairs. 

There, Father released me and crossed his arms.

My now-free hand helped to steady my plate.

Mario came up next to me. He was holding a small silvery object. A fork, maybe?

“I know about the table at school,” Father said. “You broke it.”

“So,” I said, “they called you?”

He nodded.

“And I can’t leave the room? Like, at all?”

“Not unless you’re using the bathroom or going to school,” he said. “That means no more diner visits.”

_ I don’t have much money left anyway,  _ I thought.

“Now get up there and do some work,” Father said. “If you need help with anything, especially if it’s astronomy-related, just ask.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, climbing the steps. “See ya.”

After I had gotten out of Father’s sight, I looked back to see Mario following me. I held my bedroom door open for him.

“Thanks,” he mumbled.

I shut the door behind him and put my food down on the small dresser next to my bed. 

He went over to my desk and wheeled the chair over. He sat down on it.

“Well,” I said, sitting down on the edge of my bed, “let’s get this over with.”

 

It had been five minutes and neither of us had said a thing. I slowly ate my lasagna while Mario watched with his head tucked between his knees.

Two more minutes of silence passed.

We stared at each other.

I blinked a few times.

He did too.

I lowered the fork from my mouth and laid it down on the plate.

“Mar,” I said, “you’ve been quiet.”

“So have you,” he replied. “I was waiting for you to start talking.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

Mario stretched his legs out and leaned forward. “You’ve barely touched your food. If you don’t finish it, I’ll-”

“You’ll take it?”

“Yep.”

I pushed the plate towards him.

“If I don’t finish this in the next five minutes,” I said, “you can have it. I would’ve preferred eating mac and cheese.”

“I’ll give you ten minutes.”

“It’ll get cold.”

“I’m not  _ that  _ hungry.”

“So says the man who gorged on twenty-something sandwiches and a carton of cheese crackers the other day.”

Then I leaned over the side of my bed and zippered open my bag. I took out my English folder.

“So, do you remember those guys from earlier?” I asked. “Dennis, Rick, and that other guy, Theo?”

“That’s his name?”

“You’re talking about Theo?” 

“I’m guessing that he was the one in that upstairs window?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Carry on.”

I took in a deep breath. I exhaled.

He patiently waited.

I looked him straight in the eye.  _ Here goes. _

With another exhale, I said, “They’ve… Been bullying me.”

I could’ve sworn the calm look on Mario’s face had changed for a second. It went from calm and thoughtful to widened eyes. Yet when I blinked, it was gone. The calm expression had returned.

Had it existed or had I imagined it?

“Why?” he asked me.

“I…” My voice faded. “I don’t know why, Mar. I’ve tried my best to stay low and do my own thing. I usually hang out at home and do whatever I want. You know that I like my peace and quiet.”

“Maybe they’re miserable?” he suggested.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “They’re all pretty well-off. They have tons of friends outside of their clique.”

Mario sat cross-legged on my chair. “Uh-huh.”

“You’ve seen that they’re not afraid to use force to get their way. They can be assholes. But all this time, I’ve been wondering why they’ve only been targeting me. I’ve never done anything to them.”

“Did ya ever try ignoring them? I do that when people get annoying sometimes.”

“I ended up getting elbowed in the stomach by Dennis.”

He rubbed his chin. When he finally spoke up, he said, “I’m reminded of when I was in school.”

“Did you get bullied too?” I asked. I took a bite of my food and swallowed it. 

This plumber, as a kid, being pushed around? That was hard for me to imagine. If anything, he probably would’ve fought back.

“Yeah, no,” he replied to my thoughts. “Everyone stayed clear of me.”

I dropped my fork. Forget waiting ten minutes; he could have the rest if he wanted it.

Mario took me up on that offer. He started digging through what was left.

“But…” he said between bites, “I have gotten into fights before.”

“You have?” Maybe it had been to defend his little brother? That would make sense.

He sighed, having read my thoughts again, and shook his head. “No. I used to not care so much for Luigi.”

“What are you talking abou-”

He went on talking. “Back in school, I terrorized everyone younger than me. I beat them up, stole their lunches, hung out with Wario on a daily basis, and picked on my little bro… I didn’t care who I hurt as long as I achieved my goals.”

I stared at him.

“It wasn’t until I saved Peach for the first time ever that I realized how terrible of a person I was. I broke off my friendship with Wario and became the guy you see today.” Mario wrapped his arms around his knees. 

I continued watching him in silence.

“What I’m saying is the truth. I used to be a bully. Nobody ever stood up to me until Bowser did.”

I laid my English folder down in my lap.

Mar’s face reddened as I continued to stay quiet.

“Um, I-I went on a little rant there,” he stammered. “I didn’t mean to… It just- I related to it- I probably shouldn’t have- Sorry…”

I went into my bag. When I sat back up, I was holding a big red hat.

He stopped blubbering once I dropped it over his head. The red blush on his face, however, remained.

“I guess there’s only one solution to this,” I said. “You’re coming with me to school tomorrow.”

* * *

_? _

That couldn’t be right. That Mario hat couldn’t be floating on its own.

Yet his eyes weren’t deceiving him. The hat was hanging in midair and Sammy had continued to talk as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

“Because you’ve been in a situation like this before,” she said to seemingly nobody. “You could help me.”

The hat shifted so that it floated upright.

“Besides, if I go alone tomorrow, you might end up being dragged along again. I  _ really  _ don’t want a repeat of what happened today. Alright?”

The hat made a small up-and-down gesture.

“Good.” Sammy opened the folder in her lap. “Now how about we do some of this stupid homework?”

He pulled away from the window and sat down on the awning. He still couldn’t believe it.

_ She  _ does  _ think that I’m terrible. _

The hat moved closer to her. 

Sammy, meanwhile, was reading through a book with a black cover.

This wasn’t a dream. He knew that. It had been a pain to get up here and spy on her.

_ This is crazy. This all crazy. I gotta go.  _ He crawled towards the edge of the roof, where a ladder had been placed below. He put both feet on it and twisted himself around.

_ But what’s with the hat?  _ He shivered against the cold February air.  _ Is a ghost? A demon? Or does she really believe she’s Mario? _

He smiled at that last comment and shook his head.  _ Maybe I’m just overthinking it all and need more sleep. That hat couldn’t have been floating by itself.  _ He climbed down the ladder. 

Once on the ground, he looked back up at the window one last time. 

_ I’m going to need a different approach. _


	10. Day Six

_Sam_

My Tuesday morning started with me, in a heavy blanket, tumbling out of bed. My _everywhere_ throbbed as I slowly got to my knees.

None of the pain that consumed me could compare to the explosion that had happened in my head. I slouched forward and pressed my fingers against my temples.

 _Oh no._ I thought. _Not again._

Every time I moved my head, it got worse. I had to settle for leaning against the bed frame as I waited for it to wear off.

When it finally did who knows how much later, I slowly pulled myself back up and sat down on my mattress.

Mario was still asleep in my chair across the room. His chest rose and fell with each calm breath.

My bookbag was on the desk next to him. Its top zipper was open. All of my subjects were in a pile next to it.

We had gotten a lot of work done last night. We went from discussion questions for _The Hobbit_ to math problems to somehow finishing that western civilization essay. The only subject we didn't touch was astronomy, given how the next assignment wouldn't be due for the next few weeks.

The both of us must've been up pretty late if the crust in my eyes was anything. Mario wouldn't let me sleep until that last sentence in my essay, no matter how incorrect and incomprehensible it seemed, had been written down.

"Mar," I said.

He didn't move.

I squeezed my eyes shut as my headache came back. I laid back down and hooked one of my feet underneath the blanket. I reached behind me to grab it as my foot slowly pulled it up.

" _Mar,"_ I said this time with my thoughts, " _get up."_

He moved. Crossed legs became uncrossed. His head turned inwards towards the chair.

" _Mario."_

He muttered to himself.

"I'm sorry?" I said.

He was much louder this time. "MA-rio. It's MA-rio."

"Get up, MA-rio MAR-io."

"That's MA-rio MA-rio to you, Sammy."

My pillow went flying. It whacked against his back.

"Don't call me that!" I yelled at him.

Mario sat up and stretched. He yawned out the words, "If you don't want me to do that, don't say my name wrong."

"I'll call you Mar if I want to call you Mar. Okay?"

The pillow I'd thrown at him hit my face. I fell backward with a muffled cry. My head and arms went over the opposite side of the bed as the pillow fell to the floor nearby.

Everything was upside down now. The white ceiling became the "floor". It was all that I could see.

My headache worsened. I groaned and tried lifting myself up.

I felt weak and dizzy like last time, except now that weakness had spread to more than my legs and head. My hands quivered as they tried to get a firm grip on my mattress. When they did, my upper body barely moved before I dropped back down again.

My head grew heavier by the second as blood rushed down to it. The world blurred around me. I tried again to lift myself to no avail.

The world started to go black. I shut my eyes completely and silently wished to be released from this torture.

The bed jumped. A hand slipped underneath my back.

Light flooded my sight. My blood started flowing in the right direction. I sucked in a tiny breath.

The hand that pulled me back up stayed on me. Its owner pushed himself closer to me.

Words spilled out of Mario's mouth. "I'm sooooo sorry. I didn't mean to throw it that hard. Do you feel alright? I could go downstairs and get ya an ice pack or..."

I released my breath and took another, this time much larger than the last.

"Why are you holding your head?" he asked.

"Guess," I said in a big exhale. "Just guess."

 

"I can't believe that I'm sick again," I said.

Mar let go of me so that I could sit at the kitchen table. He then went over to the fridge.

"Don't think of it that way," he said. He opened the fridge. "It's another day off for ya."

I rested my head on one of my hands. "You're only saying that because you're a high school dropout."

"More like fail-out, but yeah." He turned away from me and groaned.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

He stepped back and shut the fridge closed. "There's nothing in there but some drinks and butter. Your dad went overboard with this whole "taking away the snacks" thing,"

"Try the freezer."

"I was gonna do that anyway." Mario came back over to the table and dragged one of the chairs back to the fridge. He hopped on top of it.

Again, I found myself wondering why I didn't hear a sound when he jumped. Was that a thing that only happened in the games?

"I've got no idea what you're thinking about," he suddenly said.

Oh goodie. I'm not even "thinking thinking" and he caught on to that. "It's a weird observation. Don't mind it."

"I kinda do mind. They're _my_ games."

"Meh."

He stood on his toes as he opened the freezer.

I waited.

He shut it closed and showed me two similar-looking red and white boxes. "You want waffles?"

I squinted at it and asked, "Are those _Huntersfield_ 's or _Aunt Rebecca_ 's?"

"There's a difference?"

"Yeah," I said. " _Aunt Rebecca's_ waffles burn easy, but taste good plain if you get the timing right. _Huntersfield_ , though, is local and pretty much the brand the people here prefer eating."

He held up the box in his right hand. "This one's _Huntersfield_."

"Put it back. I've never been not a fan of their products."

"Why?" he asked. He reopened the fridge.

"None of what _Huntersfield_ makes tastes good even though their ingredients are freshly picked from farms and cooked or baked by so-called professional chefs. _Aunt Rebecca's_ is waaaay better than that junk. It reminds me of when I used to live in New York. I'd make it in the morning by myself and eat it while playing _Pokémon Ruby_." I rested my head on my fists. "I still miss that Torchic. Wish I could find the cartridge again."

"Uh-huh…" Mario said. He dropped a pair of waffles into a toaster. "What's a Torchic?"

"It's an orange chicken that turns into another chicken with arms and then some creature with long legs that doesn't resemble a chicken. Does that answer your question?"

"...Not really."

"It breathes fire."

"A _fire-breathing_ chicken?"

My head hurt again. I laid it down on the table. "Where is this conversation even going?"

"Don't ask me; you started it." As he usually did while making food, Mario put down plates at his seat and mine. That cushion he liked to sit on seemingly appeared out of thin air, and he dropped it on to his seat.

The first pair of waffles popped up. He went back over there and put them on to a larger plate.

After another set was made, he took everything and came back to the table.

"If you're not going back today," Mario said, "do you wanna play more of that _Kart_ game?"

 

Mar made a major mistake asking me to play _Mario Kart_ with him. I utterly destroyed him in a few matches before he, in his frustration, threw down his controller.

"OH, COME ON!" the irritated Italian man shrieked. "I was RIGHT THERE. I should've gotten FIRST."

I snickered and put my _Wii U_ gamepad down on my lap.

"Maybe if you hadn't wasted that banana on blocking Bowser's red shell," I told him, "you would've won. It didn't even hit you until you crossed the finish line."

"Oh, EXCUSE ME, Miss I'ma-So-Good-At-This-Stupid-Game." Mario got up and stretched his fingers. "Everybody was targeting me, I didn't get anything good to defend myself with the entire race aside from those bananas…" He let out an anguished cry.

I sat there watching him.

"I'm… I'm gonna get a snack," he said finally. "See ya in a few minutes."

He zoomed out of the room.

I picked up the _Wii U._ "Whatever you say, dude.”

On the character select screen, the cursor defaulted to Waluigi. I occasionally mained him alongside Luigi.

"Maybe he's butthurt over the fact he lost to the "loser"," I muttered. That'd be funny if it were true. It's not everyday that Waluigi tops people in anything aside from tennis. "So who do I play as this time?"

The cursor moved between Luigi and Waluigi. However, I couldn't find myself clicking on either of them this time around.

I explored Yoshi and Koopa Troopa as options and combined them with a number of combos. No matter what I tried, I couldn't imagine myself heading into 200cc with them. I'd probably be falling off every turn, and the _Wii U_ version of this game had no Smart Steering option. I ended up throwing both options out.

Next up was Bowser. He was a cool guy, but the kart combos I paired up with him never seemed to satisfy me. I dropped him too.

I outright refused to play as any of the Koopalings. I never cared enough for them as characters.

I skipped the babies as well. Unless I was playing _Partners in Time_ , I'd rather not touch them.

Princess Daisy was too excitable for my tastes. Peach seemed… Okay, but I wanted something more balanced.

This process went on and on until I was left with one option left: the red-hatted character in the upper left corner.

The cursor landed on his portrait. I stared at him.

By some crazy twist of fate, Mario had become the last man standing. He sat in the biddybuggy that I had just paired up with Lakitu.

I've never touched him in the few years that I'd owned this game. He was the game's jack-of-all-trades; either a beginner's character or a nobody in a game of somebody's.

But with him currently living with me, I found myself saying, "Why not?"

So I experimented with certain kart combinations. I went through maybe five possible combos before I thought, _Screw it_ , _I want to race already._

I gave whatever kart parts were on-screen to Mario, set the cc's to two hundred, put the items to frantic, and made the amount races I wanted to do four.

With that, I clicked the start button.

The first race was on Moo Moo Meadows. I revved up my engine as Lakitu counted down.

The racers sped off. I instantly flew ahead of everyone, hit the first curve in the road, and drifted towards the fence.

My kart tightly hugged the road as it went along the curve. My first item ended up being a green shell, which I dragged behind the kart.

The in-game Mario cried out happily as he got a turbo.

Bowser threw a red shell. It broke against my green. I laughed at his pitiful attempt to slow me down.

Mario did a trick off the ramp towards the end of the first lap. He also tricked over a monty mole burrowing around in the area.

As I finished my first lap, something just seemed to… Spark. Mario's turns were tight. His abnormally high-pitched screaming in this game didn't bother me either. This combo felt _good_ to control.

My palms grew sweaty as I grabbed the next item box.

A super horn. That was perfect. I was able to destroy the blue shell coming for me midway through the second lap.

After another minute or so, I finished the race. I watched the results come in.

First place. Fifteen points. I had utterly destroyed the competition and gotten way ahead of the other racers.

I had _won_.

I put down the gamepad and watched as Mario raced by himself. Had I really just found someone new that worked ridiculous well for me? Someone that wasn't Luigi or Waluigi? Someone who was even _better_ than the both of them?

My palms were still sweaty. I wiped them against my pants.

Interestingly enough, my headache had gone away. I could sit up straight against the couch without feeling nauseous.

“About time,” I sighed.

The cable box read 7:15. If I still wanted to go to school, I had around fifteen minutes until the bus came.

_Should I? What if the dizziness returns when I stand up?_

I heard a gasp and turned my head towards the arch that marked the living room's entrance.

Mario, the actual man now, stood there with a half-eaten piece of buttered toast. His eyes were wide and his toast was slowly sliding down its plate.

"What's with the face?" I asked, smirking. "Surprised that I'm playing as you?"

"No," he said. "No-not at all."

"So what is it? The fact that my headache’s already gone?"

"Your-your hand! It's…"

"What about my hand?" I held both of my bare palms out to him.

At least I _thought_ they were bare. My left hand had been completely consumed by a bright orange flame.

"IT'S ON FIRE!" Mario shouted.

I screamed, half from terror and a half from the suddenness of the plumber grabbing and pulling me out of the room. The two of us rushed across the foyer to the kitchen.

I watched as flames licked at my bare arm. An intense heat radiated off of it. It was all that I felt from them.

The fire _wasn't hurting me at all._

 

Mario turned on the sink and shoved my hand under the faucet.

The fire went out as soon as the gushing water touched my skin. I shivered from its coolness and pulled my arm away.

I flexed my hand. Nothing had happened to it. Heck, it looked the same as ever; I had a small scar on my palm and a birthmark near a vein on the other side.

“What are you doing?!” Mar shouted. “Put it back in!”

He didn’t wait for me to respond as he forced my hand back under the water. He held it there.

The water had gotten somewhat colder. I gasped and tried to pull away again.

Mario clamped my hand down. He glowered at me.

“I-I’m fine,” I told him, cringing.

“You might have burns,” he said.

“I’m _fine_ ,” I repeated. “I feel nothing.”

 _Except for the water,_ my mind added.

Mario didn’t let go of me. He pressed his thumb against various parts of my palm.

“No burns?” he murmured. “That’sa weird. ‘Course, we don’t know how long it was on fire before I came in…”

He released me and turned off the sink.

My arm fell back to my side.

“If you say you’re fine,” he said, “well, fine. I just gotta see that thing with the weird name you were playing with.”

He slid off the counter.

“The _Wii U_?” I said.

“Yeah. That thing.”

 

Mario gingerly flipped over the _Wii U_ gamepad and lightly tapped the spot where the battery pack was.

“Do you see anything different?” he asked. “‘Cause I don’t.”

I shrugged.

“It couldn’t have been that,” I told him. “Consoles don’t normally burst into flames.”

“Okay… This is gonna be a strange question, but does your dad store lighters in your couch? That’d be pretty dangerous.”

“My hand was nowhere near the cushions,” I said. I plucked a pillow out from the couch behind me. “And he’s not stupid enough to do that.” _Well,_ _I think so…_

Up until Mario came along, I had no idea that Father had developed that habit. What sort of stuff did he hide in our couch? Why couldn’t he use the closet in his room?  _People are weird._

Mario put down a glass of water he had been drinking from. He sat up.

“I don’t see what else could’ve started the fire,” he said. “There aren’t many humans outside of the star children that have naturally developed magic powers.”

“Uh, I’ve been talking to a dead guy for the past few days. And my world isn’t your world.”

“True.”

A tiny orange flame came to life in his left palm.

“Isn’t that your firebrand ability?” I asked.

He nodded and said,  “Yep. _Signore del Fuoco_ in the Beanbean Kingdom taught me how to use it.”

“I’m sorry?”

“ _Signore del Fuoco._ The Fire Lord.”

“I thought his name was the Fire God.”

The fire grew a smidge larger. Mario held his hand further away from him and cracked a smile.

“That’s what I’ve heard people call him,” he said. “I don’t think he or the Thunder Lord are gods. Minor spirits of power, sure, but not gods.”

Mar's eyes shifted away from mine and landed on Tabitha, who had followed us into the room. Seeing as she wasn’t causing any trouble, he refocused on me. His fire had died down to sparks.

Outside, a horn beeped. My head swerved toward the window.

The bus had come and I hadn’t even changed out of my clothes from yesterday. Guess I wasn’t going to school after all.

“Father’s going to be pissed,” I sighed.

“You’ll be fine,” Mario said. “We’ll catch up on your homework later.”

“...Fine,” I said. I picked up the TV remote. “Do you want to play more _Kart_?”

"No," he said. "Can I see your hand?”

I blinked.

“The one that was on fire. Can I see it?”

“Why?”

“‘Cause I have an idea.”

“Have an idea’?”

He took my hand, palm-up, on top of his. His fingers wrapped around it and clamped down on its edges, forcing my fingers together.

Mario’s hand sure was big compared to mine. Heck, his proportions, in general, were _extremely_ out of whack when compared to a regular human’s.

His grip softened.

“Better?” he asked.

“It’s fine,” I replied.

“Alrighty,” he said, nodding. “Don’t freak out, ‘cause I’m going to conjure a flame. If you’re developing some sorta ability to control fire, maybe you could hold it.” When I remained silent, he added, “Trust me, I did this with Luigi when he was developing minor fire abilities.”

“Really?”

He didn’t respond as his eyes narrowed. A soft heat collected in the palm of his hand.

We sat in silence for a moment. I tore my gaze away to watch the clock.

He gently squeezed my hand. “Don’t do that.”

I looked back down.

A small fire had started in his palm. It licked against the back of my hand and, again, didn’t hurt me.

The flames felt… Strange. It was as if his own fingers were dancing on my hand, leaving ticklish trails as they zig-zagged and crisscrossed across it. My hand twitched, which prompted Mar to hold my fingers together tighter.

My own warmth collected in my cheeks. I bit as hard as I could down on my quivering lip.

The ticklish feeling increased. I tried to steer my thoughts elsewhere.

 _Don’t give in and laugh,_ my mind urged. _Think of something unappealing._

I shut my eyes.

 

_Only one image came to mind. It was a person; a fat man with graying hair. He smirked at me and stood straight up, towering over me by several feet. His grin was big, and his yellowing teeth shone brightly even in the small room’s dim light._

_“Sammy,” he said. “My only grandchild.”_

_He approached me._

_I quivered. A chill ran down my spine._

_His hand slipped under my chin. He yanked my head up._

_I gasped._

_His fingers stretched to my cheek. He gently stroked it._

_Being the young, naive child I was, I let him. I felt my head drop into his hand and closed my eyes. I smiled._

_Maybe this time was going to be different. He was going to be nice to me._

_Grandpa laughed and kneeled down to my level. The fingers on my cheek traveled down to my chin._

_The next few soft and disgustingly sweet words that he whispered to me would be words that I would remember for the rest of my life._

_“I hope that you drop dead.”_

“SAM!” Mario yelled. “SAM?!”

My eyes snapped open. I was curled up against the couch’s armrest.

A wall of orange crackled before me. It extended from the wooden floor to about where my head was.

My heart was pounding. If it were possible, it’d probably be coming out of my chest.

“M-Mar?” I sputtered. “Yo-you’re there?”

An arm wrapped behind my back and a small figure pulled itself closer to me. He pressed himself against my side.

The large fire died down the instant I felt his hand on me. When I looked down…

Nothing around us had been scorched, weirdly enough. It had been as if the flames had never been conjured.

We sat together, breathing heavily.

“My little experiment got out of hand,” Mario said. “You freaked out and- And you did that!”

“I…” I whispered. My eyes wouldn’t leave that spot. “Did that?

 _“I did_?” my thoughts echoed.

He nodded.

I flipped my hands over and stared into my palms. “I did that.”

 

Neither of us spoke about the incident for the rest of the day. In fact, we didn’t speak at all. Not even after Father came home and yelled at me for not going to school again today.

I don’t know if Mario had seen what I had. A part of me wished that he hadn’t. It would make things easier for me.

The other part wondered if he had. What had he thought while it was going on? Did he see _him_?

As for the fire, I still couldn’t believe that I had somehow manipulated it. The memory of that wall of phantom flames was still etched into my mind, and it wouldn’t leave.

 

Later that night, there was a knock at my door. I got up and opened it.

Mar was standing there holding a bowl. He handed it to me.

The food inside was a cream-colored soup with bowtie noodles and meatballs floating around.

“What is this?” I asked him.

“Mushroom soup with meatballs,” he replied. He reached behind him and took out another bowl of the stuff.

I didn’t question that.

“We make it sometimes back home,” he went on saying. “I’ve never tried doing it with regular mushrooms, so I hope it tastes alright.”

I hugged the warm bowl against my chest and reached for the door. “So, um, do you want to come in?”

 

Mario’s cooking is usually what I’d grade as “passable”, but it was actually pretty great tonight. I couldn’t help eating every last noodle and meatball that I had in my bowl.

I got the chance to introduce Mar to the _3DS_ and a few of the _Super Mario_ games on that system. We took turns playing them before Tabitha interrupted us and demanded dinner from me.

She actually ate some of our leftover food. Mario wouldn’t stop laughing when she finally stopped and we found her whiskers full of the creamy soup.

The whole time we hung out, I couldn’t help but notice how Mar would occasionally stare at me. There was no emotion in those looks of his. He just did them.

Did he see that particular memory of mine? What if he started to interrogate me over it?

Unlike what happened with Dennis and company, I wasn’t so sure if I was ready to open up about _him_ and how _he_...


	11. Day Seven

_Mario_

_The man stood over her._

 

“No,” I said, pushing the eggs aside.

I found the pancake mix in the cabinet.

“Had that a day or two ago.”

Maybe I could make a grilled cheese-

“Not enough cheese.”

Or-

“There’s _nothing_ in here!”

Then I threw that empty box of mashed potatoes away.

My stomach rumbled.

I folded my arms.

“Guess I’ll hav’ta to get creative,” I sighed.

 

_He was grinning._

 

_Gotta finish making the toast._

I grabbed the butter knife and started spreading butter on top of a piece of bread.

"Mar?”

“Is that you, Sam?” I asked, turning around.

“Mawr?”

That sounded nothing like her, but I still said, “Good morning?”

“RAWWWR!”

A small tabby cat came running into the kitchen.

“Yeah,” I chuckled, “I figured it was you.”

 

_“Sammy. My only grandchild.”_

 

“It’s time to get up,” I said.

Sam groaned.

" You gotta go to school.”

She pulled the blanket closer around her. She groaned louder.

I held up her phone. It was playing some weird song in an unfamiliar language. Maybe it was German, but I wasn’t too sure.

“Please?” I asked. “I can’t turn this alarm off.”

 _"Blumenkranz_ ,” she muttered. “Freaking _Blumenkranz_.”

“ _Blumenkranz_?”

“Give me the damn thing,” she grumbled.

“Yeah, sure,” I said, holding the phone out to her.

She snatched it away from me. So much for giving it to her.

The music abruptly stopped.

Sam sat up. She put her phone down on the dresser nearby.

“Anyway,” I said, “good morning!”

 

_The child shook._

 

“Are you okay?” Sam asked me. She put down the TV remote. “If this is about the whole summoning fire thing yesterday, I still can’t believe it myself.”

“Well, I mean, yeah-”

“Am I going to be able to conjure fireballs soon?”

“I don’t know-”

“You know, like you?”

“I said, I don’t know-”

“I have no idea what I’d use fire for…”

I just shook my head.

 

_The man’s hand slipped under her chin._

 

“Hey!” somebody shouted. “It’s Maria!”

The fists holding the straps on Sam’s bag tightened.

 _“It’s them,”_ she said. _“We’re taking the long way around.”_

I only nodded and followed her down the nearest hallway.

 

_He yanked her head up and gently rubbed her cheek._

 

“Here,” Sam said to her western civilization teacher. “I finished it.”

The teacher flipped through the pages. After a second…

“Sam,” he said, “you were supposed to type the essay.”

 _“...You have_ got _to be kidding me.”_

 

_She closed her eyes and smiled._

 

“So, Maria,” that guy named Theo said, “how goes the princess-saving?”

“Not now, _Theophilus_ , Sam hissed through clenched teeth.

 _It’d be cool if I knew how to control fire,_ I heard her think. _I could burn his ass._

 

_The older guy got on his knees in front of her._

 

“I’m going to have to type the stupid thing now,” Sam groused. “It’s going to be another day late and another point lost.

“Great.”

 

_He slipped his hand under her chin and whispered-_

 

Sam shut the front door to her house closed.

“Well, that was an eventful Wednesday,” she sighed. “We didn’t have gym again.” She looked over at me. “What’d you think about today, Mar?”

I made the left turn into the living room.

“Mar?”

I flopped onto the couch and picked up the remote.

 

_“I hope that you drop dead.”_

 

Nothing notable happened for the rest of the week. Or, if anything did, I guess I didn’t notice.

Sam seemed content with ignoring me when we had to go to school. And when we got home, she spent a lot of time in her dad’s room typing up her western civ essay. She wasn’t thinking much, so that let me be alone with my own thoughts.

Speaking of my thoughts, I spent a lot of time sitting upstairs with Sam’s _3DS_ playing the _Super Mario_ games on there. I still couldn’t believe how well those _Nintendo_ guys had emulated my previous adventures. They had everything from the locations Luigi and I traveled to to the people I met correct, barring a few strange details here and there.

For one, I wish that they got the map of the Mushroom Kingdom correct. In one game, there’d be a Toad Town, and the next there’d be nothing. What happened to everybody? Why are they usually all toads?

And why did the guy who was supposed to be me in these games… Suck?

 

When we got home Friday afternoon, Sam and I went straight upstairs.

“Have you noticed how quiet Dennis has been?” Sam asked. She shut the bedroom door behind her. “You’d think with me suddenly being made fun of by random people for the “Maria” incident, he’d be the first in line to do so.”

I shrugged.

“Whatever, I guess,” she said. “I’m glad to be done with that essay.”

I nodded.

“Though…” She frowned and walked over to her bed. She took her bag off and put it down. “You’ve been quiet this past couple of days too. What’s up with that?”

I followed her to the bed and hopped on. I kicked my shoes off.

Sam’s gaze landed on me. “Well?”

Guess it was time to talk about that thought that wouldn’t stop nagging me.

Aaaaaaaand before I could, her nose wrinkled up and she folded her arms. “You should take a shower. It’s been about a week since you got here and you smell like you’ve been living in a landfill.”

I frowned.

“What?” she said. “It’s the truth.”

 

I headed down to the bathroom. There wasn’t any chance of her dad walking in on me; he’s usually not around until the evening, so it was a good time to shower.

I was glad Sam had reminded me to take one. As soon as I’d taken my gloves off and felt my hair… _Ick_. I’d let it get too greasy compared to my mustache.

I tossed all of my clothes on top of the laundry basket and turned on the shower. Then I unwrapped the bar of soap I’d taken with me.

My stomach felt kinda itchy as I stepped into the tub. I scratched at it as I turned on the water.

“Here we go,” I mumbled.

I took the bar of soap and started washing. As I looked down-

Red.

I froze.

_Red._

With how red my stomach was, maybe I’d just been sitting on it too long? It’d probably been a bad idea to lay on a hard floor all day. It’d left a large bruise behind.

No, I’m in denial. That wasn’t some sorta extremely red bruise on my stomach. Sitting in place for a long time doesn’t give you markings like that.

 The red that was on me was dried _blood_ , an-and-

 

 _The last ever thing he truly_ ever _felt before darkness completely swallowed him was a hand on his back._

_How was he alive? That wound he took to his abdomen should have killed him!_

_Did he have a one-up all this time?_

_No, that couldn’t be it. He wouldn’t be lying down like this if he was alive. He’d “respawn”, as the Mushroom Kingdomers called the phenomenon, from thin air on his feet._

_“My lady,” a soft voice said, “his soul still lingers within his failing body.”_

_“Then_ remove  _it,” a second voice replied. When the first voice didn’t speak, it added on, “I don’t care what you do with his spirit. Crush it, send it down that pipe we found earlier, or something. All I want is for him to be out of the way.”_

_“Yes, my lady.”_

_There was a short moment of silence._

_“What do we do about the body?”_

_The woman answered, “I’ll be taking the spear back from him. I don’t want to lose it; that’s my favorite one. As for the body itself…”_

_She_ _laughed. “We’re not burying it. I have a much_ better _idea.”_

 _A cool hand touched his cheek._ _He cringed and pulled his face away._

_The woman laughed even harder. “Aw, he still has some fight left in him. Cute.”_

_He heard shuffling._

_“Let’s see how much he struggles when I pull this thing straight out of him!”_

_An immense, throbbing pain consumed him, starting from his stomach. It wracked every inch of his body, and it caused him to_ scream.

 

“Mar?”

Sam opened the door. She held a butter knife in her left hand and was shielding her eyes with the other.

“Hey,” she groused loudly over the pouring shower water, “sorry that I have to break in, but it’s been an hour and you haven’t been answering me.”

She heard nothing.

“You have to get out.”

He didn’t talk.

“I’m not even looking at you. Just say something.”

Mario stayed silent.

She risked taking a peek through her fingers.

A short, brown-haired man, surrounded by tons of sud bubbles, was face-up in an overflowing bathtub. A small yellow shampoo bottle floated next to his body.

“Did you _fall asleep_ in there?” Sam asked, her voice tinged with disbelief.

She took a small, cautious step into the room.

His face, and that big nose of his, was barely above the water.

Her eyes widened at the sight. “Ma-Mario?”

The bright red spot on his stomach seemed to glow when contrasted against the white suds surrounding him. Was it... Bleeding?

“Mar?!” Sam dashed forward. “I have no freaking clue what happened here, but I’ll get you out-”

His eyes snapped open.

She flinched.

His big blue eyes and her small brown ones met.

She took a step back and turned her head.

“Ne-nevermind!” she said.

The man in the tub screamed regardless.

* * *

_Mario_

I stared at the wall as I sat in the corner of Sam’s bedroom. My knees were tucked against my chest.

Sam was nearby, watching as I wiped a warm, wet napkin against my skin. Next to her was a first aid kit.

I cringed as I cleaned my wound. I had to will my hand to keep going when it faltered.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to-”

“ _No_ ,” I hissed at Sam. “I can do it myself.”

Her shoulders slumped. “I’m glad that it’s not actually bleeding. I can’t stand blood.”

“Can ya pass me a big bandage now?” I asked.

She flipped open the first aid kit and handed one to me.

I tore it open and applied it to my skin. When that was done, I tossed the bandage’s wrappers aside.

Sam scooped them into a miniature trash can that’d been by her desk.

I put my shirt back on and exhaled. “There. It’s done.” I looked up at Sam. “Sorry about-”

“Don’t apologize,” she interrupted me. “You’re fine.”

I nodded and put a hand against the bandage. “I hope so.”

 

“It…” I said, “It felt as if I was being set on fire.”

My eyes shut, remembering the searing pain that Lady Khione had inflicted on me. My own pain-ridden scream rang in my ears.

Sam stood at the kitchen counter. She was in the middle of brewing some hot chocolate.

“It was that bad?” she said.

I nodded.

She muttered some stuff under her breath. I didn’t bother trying to listen in on it.

I laid my head on the table and continued watching her make her drink. She stirred a concoction of milk and chocolate bars together. When she was done, she put the mug in the microwave.

“Do you want to do anything?” she asked me. “Like, video games or browsing the internet?” When I didn’t answer, she added, “Maybe we could make a late-night snack?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

She leaned on the counter. Her fist rested on her chin. She mumbled more things to herself.

The microwave beeped.

Sam opened it up and took out the mug.

“That’s good enough,” she said. She shut the microwave door closed and mixed the ingredients some more with a spoon. Then she shuffled back over to the table.

I heard a dull thump. I picked my head up so that I could keep watching her.

The mug she held scratched against the wooden table.

I lifted my eyebrows. Why was she moving it this way?

The white mug stopped inches from my nose. The chocolate inside it violently splashed around.

My eyes wandered further up to Sam.

She’d already walked away.

My mouth opened, then shut.

Sam took another cup from the dryer rack by the sink. She picked up a giant jug of milk and poured more into it.

I cupped the mug in my hands. “Are you giving this to me?”

She turned around to face me. One end of her mouth curved upwards.

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s yours. I can always make more.”

My mouth opened again.

“You’re welcome," she said.

“Um, uh, thanks?”

She turned away and shook her head.

I lifted my mug and took a sip of the hot chocolate. The moment the milk hit my tongue, I tasted the dark chocolate and-

I stopped mid-sip.

Wow. Just, _wow_.

That flavor _smacked_ me. She’d added a pinch of cinnamon alongside those chocolate bars.

This cup of hot cocoa instantly reminded me of when Luigi made them back home during the wintertime. He’d add about the same amount of cinnamon to our drinks and, occasionally, a marshmallow. It’s pretty amazing how similar the flavor was. Minus the tasty marshmallow floating in cocoa, obviously.

Wow, I miss the good old days.

I put the mug down, still feeling its heat on my face.

Sam turned to face me. She carried a second mug with her back to the table.

As she sat down, I pushed my mug towards her.

She blinked. She’d almost started drinking her hot chocolate.

“You made some pretty good cocoa there,” I said. “Could I have another?”

She blinked a second time.

“Please? If I tried making this myself, I’d get everything wrong.”

She lowered her head while biting her lip. But try as she might, she couldn’t hide that little smile that appeared on her face.

“I’ll do that,” she said, “Mario.”

She cupped her mug with both hands and took a nice, long drink from it.

 

“Wasn’t Khione the name of the woman who pulled the spear out of you?” Sam asked.

My newfound injury throbbed at the mere mention of that… Weapon. I put my hand up against it.

“Yeah,” I replied.

Everything outside Sam’s window had turned white from the blizzard that’d moved in. I couldn’t find the street lamps out there anymore.

Sam laid on the single flat pillow on her bed. I couldn’t wrap my head around how she could sleep with only that. Wouldn’t she hurt her neck?

She seemed fine with it as she played with her phone.

I slid off the windowsill and went over to her bed. I sat down at its edge.

Sam turned her head. She’d wrapped a heavy blanket around herself.

“Khione’s the name of a snow goddess in Greek mythology,” she said. “And it’s not pronounced “key-on”. I always thought it was “key-on”.”

I noticed the piece of paper in her lap. Her eyes darted from it and her phone, and back again. Her fingers tapped against the screen after each look between them.

“Whatcha writing?” I decided to ask her.

“Notes,” she told me.

“About what?”

“You.”

I leaned over the paper. “Me?”

**(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)**

  * _This whole thing started when Toadsworth, Peach’s advisor, wandered on to the Bros’ property injured._


  * _It’s a sunny day in the Mushroom Kingdom. Storm clouds gathered and it started snowing._


  * _Mario ran off to deal with whatever problem had arisen at Peach’s castle. That was the last time he’d ever see Luigi._


  * _His next memory was of bleeding out in Peach’s throne room. Somebody, a woman, was talking to him. Does Jaydees exist in the mainline SM universe?_


  * _“Lady Khione” ripped the spear used to kill Mar out of him. Is she the same person who was talking to him as he laid dying in one of his earlier flashbacks?_ Was she the one who murdered him?


  * _Khione suggested that somebody should send his hat, possessed by his soul, down a pipe. That must be how he ended up here._


  * _I’ve been able to telepathically talk to Mar._


  * _Mario and his world are both real. I’m not hallucinating._


  * _Mar has a wound on his stomach from being stabbed by a spear. It’s not bleeding; it’s scabby, but we had it bandaged up anyway._  



**(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)-(-)**

I felt a shiver down my spine at the mention of the spear. My hand went back to where my wound was.

“I've added on to that list I made after your first few flashbacks,” Sam said. “As you can tell, I have some questions. Like, who is this “Khione”? Why was she attacking the Mushroom Kingdom?”

“You didn’t write those ones down,” I said.

“They’re still questions that we need to have answered.” She cast the paper aside but kept holding on to her phone. “Can you remember anything else?”

I shook my head. “Not really.”

“I thought so.” She typed something else into her phone and put down. Then she gestured at the mug on the table nearby. “Are you done with that hot chocolate?”

I reached over, grabbed it, and gulped down the rest of the cocoa.

“I’m done now,” I said, putting it back on the table.

Sam crossed her arms. “Yeesh. You drank that as if I was about to steal it.”

 _“I totally would have,”_ her thoughts added.

I snorted.

 

I jolted awake. My breaths were coming out short and shaky.

My hand, as it was always doing now, landed on my stomach. It snatched at my overalls.

“Mama mia,” I sighed.

The room had become nearly pitch black. Sam laid in her bed nearby, snoring softly.

My pained screams from my dream rang in my ears. I grabbed an armrest on Sam’s chair and took a deeper, slower breath.

 _Get outta my head,_ I thought. _Please, I don’t want to remember the pain._

Sam’s bed creaked. I turned my attention over there, thankful for a brief distraction.

Sam had rolled over on her side.

“Meatball,” she sleepily uttered. “I’m your hero.”

I tilted my head. “Eh?”

“My princess isn’t in another castle. She’s right here.”

Ah, yes. Those words. That was almost the exact same phrase I heard from the Toads I rescued during my first ever adventure to save Peach.

“I’ll make you eat my shorts, Bowser.”

I covered my mouth to stifle my laughter. And Luigi’s told me that _I_ say weird stuff in my sleep.

This was a nice little surprise, actually. You gotta wonder what’s going on in that dream of her’s.

She threw her arm over the side. “Okay, let’s fight you stupid turtle.”

Her hand burst into flames. Sparks fell to the floor, only to disappear.

My breath became caught in my throat. I slipped out of the chair and rushed to her side.

“Sam!” I cried out. “You’re on fire again-”

She reached out and latched on to my arm with her flaming hand.

I stopped in my tracks.

The flames scraped against my skin. When they did, they didn’t hurt. It was just like the wall of fire she’d summon earlier this week if maybe a bit warmer.

I pried her hand away from me and set it back down on her bed.

The moment I let go of Sam, the flames went out. She rolled over onto her stomach.

“Princess...” she moaned.

I took her blanket and threw it back over her shoulders.

 _Tomorrow,_ I thought. _We’ll hav’ta tackle this issue tomorrow._

I turned away and left the room with that in mind.


End file.
